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by neximo4
3759 days ago
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Every country wanted something out of the EU other countries may have not agreed to, the French wanted agricultural subsidies. If you have 28 countries in a trade union, you're bound to have disagreements. The government in the UK was particularly enraged about FTT (Financial Transaction Tax) a couple of years ago & that is what has actually led to this whole referendum thing. Every country is good at its own things and they wouldn't like it if was attacked. Imagine a tax on manufactured exports, Germany would have a fit. It's not like there are policies in the EU that attempt to reduce trade in financial services such as the tobin tax on financial transactions. Italy enacted the tax and its reduced trade quite considerably. Every country has it's own fight in the EU, it's not just Britian, France had the subsidies problem, Greece had its bailout problem.. each has had its own. There isn't a reason for Britian to be treated differently. Sweeping generalisations you say? Have you not asked Frenchmen their opinions of the UK in the EU? There are a couple of firms that have done unbiased polls all over the EU and Frenchmen quite simply do not like the UK in the EU, some things just don't change. CDG is long dead but he is still relevant as he chimes in with the unchanged opinions. |
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Agricultural policies were planned in 1957 and mostly finalized in 1964, long before the UK even joined. This is what I mean by cornerstone: agriculture, energy, industry, economic development... these were defined at the very beginning with the Treaty of Rome. By constantly attacking them, one undermines the whole setup, and that is unclout from someone who joined much later.
> The government in the UK was particularly enraged about FTT (Financial Transaction Tax) a couple of years ago & that is what has actually led to this whole referendum thing.
You conveniently ignore more than 20 years of sustained attacks by the British press on European legislation on all sorts of issues. UKIP did not start in response to the FTT. The referendum idea started gaining traction around the time Blair won his second mandate, when Brown's position on the Euro looked a bit weak, but had been around ever since Thatcher joined. The actual referendum timetable has been entirely defined by the need for settling disagreements internal to the Conservative Party once they had secured a majority. There is simply no single policy that is responsible for precipitating it.
> It's not like there are policies in the EU that attempt to reduce trade in financial services such as the tobin tax on financial transactions.
These policies were discussed while the UK government went through an acute bout of isolationism. Looking back only a couple of years, Brown's influence over European response to the 2008 crash was widely recognised as huge, and it's a fair bet to say that with him at the negotiating table things would have looked very different.
If you don't engage, they will ignore your needs, simple as.