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Comment by pavlov | Hacker News Reader

The EEA is practically “EU + a handful of countries that apply EU rules but don’t get to participate in decision making for historical reasons”.

That’s why Britain didn’t even consider joining the EEA after they left the Union. From their point of view, it would still be the regulatory burden of EU membership without most of the benefits they enjoyed as a full member. When they’d decided to take the economic impact of leaving the free trade area, it wouldn’t really make sense to stay on worse terms than they already had.

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No, they get the benefit of tariff-free and non-tariff-barrier-free trade in goods and services with EU members. That's a huge deal.

EEA still has the four freedoms which was not acceptable to the UK.

A smart person who has read up on EU/UK and some European migration situations will note that migration to e.g: Denmark/Switzerland is still difficult despite being part of those four freedoms. This is because they bothered to mitigate migration within the parameters of the law; since the right to work under EU's four freedoms only applies for 6 months.

But tariff free trade for goods benefits the EU more as the UK service sector is bigger than their goods sector. UK services companies (especially regulated services like finance, law, etc) are at a disadvantage to EU companies because the UK companies don't have equivalency (i.e. the either need extra checks (costs) to operate in the EU, or need to open a corporate office in the EU).

And, the UK recently decided to forgo their UKCA mark to replace the CE mark as it would cost UK businesses too much to support both.

And lastly the UK has yet to impose sanitary and phyto-sanitary rules on imports into the UK because it would cost consumers in the UK too much (UK food inflation is still higher than just about all EU countries even without the checks). But the EU does impose sanitary and phyto-sanitary checks on food imports to the EU from the UK. So, in net the EU benefits from this as well.

So in balance the UK doesn't benefit. And it's a huge deal.

> UK food inflation is still higher than just about all EU countries even without the checks

Have you considered that UK food inflation is higher precisely because they're not in the single market?

I don’t anyone here is arguing that leaving the single market was a great idea. Rather that it doesn’t make much sense to stay in it if you want to leave the EU.

That was my exact point; it's somewhat more expensive to import food into the UK now because of Brexit. And far more expensive to export (in relative terms to EU sourced food in the EU).

I phrased my previous comment wrong (and should edit it). There’s of course a benefit to adopting the regulations and following the rules — you get to participate in the free trade area. But without a say in how those regulations and rules are formed.

Thing is, now the UK doesn't get to participate in the free trade area, but is a rule taker anyway:

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2023/aug/01/uk-eu-safet... - UK to retain EU safety mark in latest Brexit climbdown

https://www.bbc.com/news/business-66394235 - Post-Brexit import checks on food delayed again

It’s strictly the regulatory burden of EU membership without any of the benefits of the club.

That's not really true if you are living in one of those countries (I live in one of those countries). In general, we get the protections that the EU gives its people and I get free travel within the zone. Lots of little things like my phone working without outrageous charges when I travel to most places here, too.

>like my phone working without outrageous charges when I travel to most places here

Just don't get anywhere near Liechtenstein, Switzerland, Andorra, Monaco with your roaming enabled :)

Liechtenstein, Norway and Iceland are EEA members, and roaming is fine for those.

Switzerland has its own arrangement, and the roaming deal doesn't apply.

Andorra, Monaco, the United Kingdom, the Faroe Islands, Bosnia, Serbia, Kosovo, Montenegro, Belarus, Russia, North Macedonia, Ukraine and Moldova are not in the EU or EEA.

There are some benefits. The article that we're commenting about, for example.

Well, you could plausibly argue right this moment that those strict regulatory burdens are a benefit of the club - since in this case they're benefiting from those regulations curbing abuse from international companies

Something which almost certainly wouldn't happen if they passed these laws by themselves, rather than as part of a much larger economic area.

But otherwise... I mostly agree with you. Lots of laws, not much representation.

The regulatory "burden" is also a benefit, in general, which a lot of people fail to understand and is also the reason Brexit Britain hasn't significantly diverged from EU rules.

Yes, it's hard to explain to people just how much of a saving being in the EU makes on regulations. It outweighs having the odd regulation that you don't agree with. If the UK does move away from EU regulations then they'll have to duplicate a lot of effort.

Northern Ireland is still de-facto part of the EU. So unless the UK rejoins the EU or recognises United Ireland - they are stuck in this limbo.

It's because people also think of directives, which are the EU thing of "do this, but write all your own slightly different laws." All the EU stuff in total is not as useful as you're making it sound. It's getting better now, but it's taking a long time.

Yes, getting Microsoft's disrespect was worth it.

EEA countries get freedom of movement with the EU, among other things. An EEA citizen can work in an EU country without any other requirements.

Sure they get benefits, just they get no influence on what those benefits are.

And the UK follows EU regulations anyway, by not controlling imports (latest climbdown, delayed food checks until 2024, 5th time of delaying) and indefinitely accepting CE certification mark (meant to be superseded in the UK by UKCA).

True, but in this case I suspect that since the UK isn't n the EEA then MS Windows won't honour the user browser settings in the UK (even if the UK voluntarily follows some EEA / EU laws).

Northern Ireland is still de-facto part of the EU.

Only for goods, not services.

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