When did the EU try to crush the UK?
And is the UK really walking away because it doesn't like EU trading regulations? I thought they're trying their damnedest to continue benefiting from those regulations.
Loss of sovereignty as it pertains to 'migrant quotas'. A country should be able to say - 'no, we have decided to not receive these migrants. These people need to go from where they came'.
Someone will have to provide links on whether migrant quotas were part of the original agreement in the formation of the EU. So if Britain decides its more important to retain their ability to make this decision vs. remaining in the EU, that's a decision Britain can make. And they did.
The African Union/OPEC (probably the only actual authority with any economic leverage in the ME) should designate areas where refuges can be returned.
Morality aside, might/power defines reality in this world. The reality is that the US stirred the pot in the ME, and the EU suffers because of it. In the absence of war crime charges/damages brought before the ITC, this is the only recourse that is within Britain's best interest, based on the election they held.
>> Loss of sovereignty as it pertains to 'migrant quotas'. A country should be
>> able to say - 'no, we have decided to not receive these migrants. These
>> people need to go from where they came'.
Not a single one.
The UK instead had volunteered to take in 20,000 people [3], primarily children from Jordan, Lebanon and Turkey. Despite volunteering, as far as I'm aware it's still prevaricating about actually taking them in. They're still languishing at Calais, or being held at detention centres in the UK.
I don't see how any of this shows that the EU "crushed" the UK, or that it caused the UK to lose sovereingty. The UK absolutely said "no, we have decided not to receive these migrants"- via the opt-outs I mentioned.
A very British thing, opt-outs. The UK has opt-outs for every little EU regulation, it seems. Yet the UK is always "losing its sovereignty" in the EU. How does that work?
___________________
[1] List of participants in the 22 September 2015 Justice and Home Affairs Council:
http://www.european-council.europa.eu/media/22968/2015-09-22...
[2] Council decision estabilishing provisional measures in the area of international protection for the benefit of Italy and Greece; see Annexes I and II, with allocations from Italy and Greece, respectively, to member states:
http://data.consilium.europa.eu/doc/document/ST-12098-2015-I...
[3] For a sense of perspective, France offered to take in 24,000; Germany famously has thrown its gates wide open; and about 2.7 million refugees are currently in Turkey, willingly or not.
Leaving the EU is suicide.
It's self harm.
There must be a threat, there must be a risk, there must be a price for leaving (Hollande)
"Welcome to hell", said to the UK's negotiator on reaching the negotiation table.
"Brexit itself is already punishment enough" (Tusk)
Voting to leave will destroy 500,000-800,000 jobs due to "uncertainty" over how the EU will react (this claimed turned out to be false in the end).
The UK financial industry will be forced by the EU to move tens of thousands of people/jobs to the EU. Also all flights will be grounded. This is the "price" of leaving.
--
It is fair to say that in general everything said and done by the EU is designed to cause maximum damage, always with the caveat that continued automatic obedience to EU law and courts will make the "pain" go away (as they put it).
And is the UK really walking away because it doesn't like EU trading regulations? I thought they're trying their damnedest to continue benefiting from those regulations
The primary "benefit" of complying with those regulations is the EU does not impose bans on your products. The regulations themselves are often badly thought out - that's what this whole thread is about, badly thought out GDPR regulations causing US businesses to give up trying to sell to the EU (effectively the EU has created massive new trade barriers with the rest of the world).
The EU is not banning any products from the UK. The benefit that the UK gets is is tarriff-free access to the common market. Any trade, with anyone is subject to tarriffs, so that's a real benefit- unlike any imagined harm coming from "bans" that never happened.
They are also talking about banning member state citizens from buying tickets from British airlines in situations where they currently can. And possibly banning all flights from the UK to the EU. Again, bans, not tariffs.
Lastly, I note that the effect of GDPR is that effectively "Europeans" are now banned from buying training products from this US training firm. It's not technically a government ban, it's more like major encouragement to the outside world to implement their own private sector bans, but the end result is identical: you cannot buy at any price.
What is really the case is that Brexit risks causing British financial instutitions to lose their financial passporting rights, that allow them to trade in the EU.
As to flights, the risk here is that, without other international flight agreements for some UK companies (such as Ryanair and EasyJet) other than EU agreements, such companies risk losing the right to fly outside of Europe, or within the EU.
Both of the above are the result of international agreements being rendered invalid because of Brexit, and not some sort of punishment that the EU decided to bestow upon the UK.
Obviously EU competitors will step in immediately and eat the UK's lunch, wherever they find the opportunity. But I don't know what else anyone could expect. I understand the British are great believers in a free market, after all.
Indeed, as far as the UK is concerned, the market after Brexit is going to be almost completely unregulated.