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Comment by safgasCVS | Hacker News Reader

Unless there is someone here who can shed more light all I can see is from way the EU members treated Greece it made it very clear the EU was never going to let the U.K. leave and profit from the deal.

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"U.K. leave and profit from the deal.|

I find this unfortunately phrased. There is not much the EU can do and the EU has no intention of "punishing" the UK.

But the EU will

1. Protect its common market and the four freedoms

2. Will not give a European country the same deals as a non-European country to protect the European idea. (e.g. won't insists on freedom of movement with, let's say Japan).

Both things are hard to comprehend for many Brexiteers.

> the EU was never going to let the U.K. leave and profit from the deal.

Most economists told us that the overall economic pie after Brexit would be smaller..

So the idea that anyone would benefit seems like a fantasy.

I suspect that the author of this is not, in fact, particularly perplexed by what the EU is doing in these negotiations: they clearly see the UK as part of their sphere of influence and want to make an example of us to discourage the others. However, their public position is that they're absolutely not doing that and that this is a perfectly normal trade negotiation with perfectly normal terms that, in any case, the UK has already agreed to. This document is basically taking that public position and pointing out that it bears absolutely no resemblance to reality.

I remember reading somewhere that the EU members treatment of Greece that you're referring to could be considered both a betrayal and common sense. I guess something vaguely similar can be said about brexit, but it should be more like how the UK betrayed EU due to lack of common sense.

You seem to be blaming the EU for the choices freely made by Greece and the UK. The EU doesn't exist to coddle self-destructive nations at its own expense.

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