So after the Brexit there will be more than enough money to continue the research funding. But as you mention already, it is another question if the government will be wanting to pay it. But is this really such a bad thing? The difference will that instead of the EU, the UK itself will decide which of its research projects it wants to fund.
Whether or not Brexit will boost public finances is entirely down to how much of an impact it'll have on the UK economy. No one knows what the impact will be, but almost everyone agrees that it will be negative... though no one agrees to what extent.
So there's really two questions here: a) just how much more/less public money will be available? and, b) if there is more, how much of it will go to research?
No one knows the answers to either question, not even the government.
edit: a very quick back-of-envelope calculation based on the forecast tax receipts for 2014-2015 of 648.1bn[1]: 8.5bn makes up a whopping 1.31% of tax receipts. Unless I'm mistaken, tax receipts correlate strongly with the strength of the economy, so any more than a ~1.3% decline in the economy as a consequence of Brexit, would consume the "savings".
And it's assuming that a new government is inclined to take the money and give it to the kinds of projects that the EU used to give it to - I can think of a lot of reasons why that might not happen.
The main thing is that at the moment, we really have no idea at all what the financial costs will be - particularly of accessing the EU market - and until we do then a lot of this must hang in the balance.
In practice, if the EU doesn't strike a deal with the UK (which it won't) then I think it will suffer more exits. Because the EU has spent years trying to sign free trade deals with America, Canada and other places. If it turns around and says "we will give those countries tariff-free access to our markets but not the UK" this will send a powerful message to all EU citizens that this is not an organisation with their best interests at heart.
It is a fundamentally unattractive entity. The people who run it have never even tried to combat rising anti-EU feeling across the continent, as they believe the EU is inevitable and unstoppable, so why bother trying to make it more popular.
Now it's probably too late: they've become so gripped by groupthink they can't reform quickly enough even if they wanted to, hence the focus is now 100% on trying to make leaving as scary as possible vs trying to make staying in as attractive as possible.
In the long run this is a failing strategy. The EU is unresponsive and so makes mistakes that upset local populations. In the UK it was migration policy. The latest was telling Spain and Portugal they'd be punished for breaking rules that France and Germany also break punishment free. That's not going down well.
The combination of a retention policy based on fear rather than respect + a succession of local gaffes do not bode well for the future of the union.
Yes, that's why the EU is doomed and will be gone within a decade no matter what they do now.
But in fact, communism survived for more than another twenty years...
My point: these things take longer than one would expect. Unlike logic, where a proven theorem takes its "logical effect" immediately, the politic process has massive inertia. The time gap between "result obvious and unavoidable" and "result effective" can be decades.
I second your sentiment, but I'm afraid it will take much longer for the EU to fall apart. Just like with communism before (and about as "reformable"). I personally think it will take a generation, starting now -- especially in parts of the west that have to tread this glorious neo-marxist path for the first time.
This presumably explains why 28 countries have joined and there are still more waiting to join.
> The people who run it (...) believe the EU is inevitable and unstoppable
The people who run it are for the most part the elected leaders of the member states, who are no strangers to euro-skepticism, since they never fail to exploit it when it suits them (e.g. to deflect criticism of unpopular legislation by claiming that "Brussels" requires it).
I thought discussion here was under the assumption that the UK wants to participate in exactly those research projects...
> In the UK it was migration policy.
It was the UK governments migration policy.
Serious question: would that make you happy? Would you maybe prefer a replacement for the EU?
Making a case from an uninformed POV is not convincing me. If you back up your statements with data and pointers I'll pay more attention!
[1] http://www.parliamentlive.tv/Event/Index/cb083c53-3998-4f3a-...
I tend to not argue from the basis of how the EU is supposed to work, because it tends to put its long-range vision ahead of following specific rules. See how the deficit rules are working out: France is allowed to break the rules "because it's France" (Juncker's words).
To predict the behaviour of such an institution it's better to listen to what the leaders are saying and how they've acted before rather than trying to read the fine print.
That is quite a bold statement that needs a lot of statements from people who can make these decisions to back it up. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence
The people who run the Commission have been saying explicitly they don't even want to start talking about a free trade deal with the UK until after the UK is fully out. There's no reason for this, they could easily run the talks in parallel, but they have no desire to do so.
Now consider the extreme difficulty the EU faces in signing deals even when it wants to (will TTIP pass? won't it? I wouldn't bet on it either way), and adding these two things together makes any kind of TTIP or CETA like deal between EU and UK very unlikely.
Will the EU suffer more exits? Well, anti-EU politicians (or at least very eurosceptic politicians) have been rising throughout Europe for some time now and some countries are quite exposed to mandatory tariffs on UK trade (the Netherlands, France, Germany). Once the UK stabilises and the fact that trade barriers cut in both directions sink in, there will be a lot of people asking why the EU is dragging its feet over a deal.
To say there's no chance of further exits does not seem less extreme than saying there will be.
This is incorrect. They are saying there will be no negotiation until Article 50 invoked, after which there will be two years of negotiations before complete exit.
http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-eu-referendum-36682735
The EU's Trade Commissioner, Cecilia Malmstrom, says the UK cannot begin negotiating trade terms with the bloc until after it has left. "First you exit then you negotiate," she told BBC Newsnight.
Now how much power does Ms Malmstrom have over EU trade policy? I would assume quite a lot. It may be that she still ends up being wrong, but my statement was correct and your rebuttal was not.
I think that you wanted to say that "this is not an organisation with UK best interests at heart.
UK government has little sympathy in the rest of the EU
First, we're all significantly poorer. As individuals. Fuel, goods, foreign travel, etc. are all significantly more expensive.
Second, what goods? We don't actually export much stuff so the benefits of being able to sell stuff cheaper isn't terribly attractive. Even if this did stimulate e.g. UK manufacturing in the long term, we're starting from a poor position and...
Third, the stuff we do sell tends to be services or of the value-added variety -- all of which depends on imports, so much of any extra money we make will be swallowed up by increased costs.
Fourth, even if we did sell more stuff, the money we made from it would be worth 8% less.
Greece is a country where the population were 'sacrificed' to bail out French and German bankers (if you look where the bailout funds actually went most never hit Greece)
Some projects are only viable at a super-national level, either because of cost or resources (such as access to specialised technical centres in other countries or a wider level of expertise). Brexit doesn't stop the UK contributing to such projects but it does make it significantly more difficult by withdrawing from the established structures in place.
The other reason is that much of the net cost to the EU involves paying for the common legal and political platform that makes international trade much easier. It may superficially seem that the UK will save money but in practice it is highly likely (and according to a strong consensus of international experts) that removing access to these structures will have a strongly negative impact on the UK's trade. This is likely to be very bad for UK science.
Speaking purely for myself, as a UK resident, I believe that the UK government will be significantly more populist and far more short-term in its thinking, and I expect to see research massively cut (with associated long-term damage) in favour of tax cuts and pandering. So in one man's view, this is such a bad thing.
Research needs international collaboration, and UK funding only would make it more difficult.
Just as a sanity check: there is no reason (other than your funding agency stopping you) for researches with their own funding to collaborate across borders where and when they see fit.
Btw, here in Switzerland the sky didn't fall either after the people voted to 'leave' (the free EU labor market). After all the doomsday talk, Swiss labs can still apply to EU grants. The only thing that has changed that the money that formerly took a detour to EU now goes directly from the Swiss government to the Swiss labs.
Calm down people. Nothing gets eaten as hot as it gets cooked. Its of mutual benefit for almost everyone in Europe to continue free trade with Britain.
Here in Germany we have locally funded research, research on the state level, research on the Bundesrepublik level, international research cooperations and EU research. All at the same time. No one forces scientists to 'collaborate'.
> there is no reason (other than your funding agency stopping you) for researches with their own funding to collaborate across borders where and when they see fit.
Countries in Europe want to see it coordinated and research pooled. Every government does that on a local level for its research budgets. The EU does that on a larger scale. Switzerland is a tiny country. CERN would not exist without outside money and collaborative research.
> The only thing that has changed that the money that formerly took a detour to EU now goes directly from the Swiss government to the Swiss labs.
Switzerland labs are actually performing very well, and get more money from the EU research budget than what Switzerland gives to the EU budget (net gain of CHF 219 millions according to http://www.sbfi.admin.ch/aktuell/medien/00483/00586/index.ht... )
International collaboration is beneficial: http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/brexitvote/2015/12/05/debunking-the-m...
Yes, you can collaborate without a specific grant, but in my experience, it makes the collaboration easier.
Once the Swiss government actually implements the anti mass migration and breaks the core of the bilateral, a lot more treaties will go on both sides. This has not happened yet, and you can feel the worry on the political, economic and academic top. The quiet before the storm is almost over. Switserland, was not even part of the single market (customs for goods is still a thing here).
Switzerland also had the advantage of buying an insane amount of euro's and is tightly bound to the success of the eurozone. The UK central bank does not have such a stockpile of euro's and is much weaker in that regards.
Switzerland, is not a good example for the UK.
This is true in all areas except research funding. That's because researchers can take part in EU-funded projects (e.g. Horizon 2020) where the funding was awarded to a multi-national project team and so doesn't form part of the UK entitlement.