will the EU leave Britain?

@mrs_teapot wrote:

OK, I dont profess to be fully informed about the EU… in fact I doubt any of us know fully what the advantages are of being a member…. I have read though that it costs us between 14.5 and 17.5 billion each year to be a member although we do get back about 4 billion in subsidies.

I wonder what we want from the EU… is it as a trading partner? Because that was what we thought we were voting for in the last referendum… if so thats what Norway has…… and wait for it… they contribute nothing to the EU…. so they have what we all voted for in the last referendum for nothing.

If its more than trading we want… what is it? What is it that attracts us to it….. Im trying to think of the advantages? Anyone know?

Hmmm seems no one else knows either :?

The European Union is most commonly discussed in terms of constitutional debates, treaty negotiations, vetoes and votes. Of course, it is absolutely right that the crucial issue of the democratic deficit is addressed, but there are other reasons to be concerned about our relationship with the EU. The vast cost of the EU is foremost among them.

As important as questions of sovereignty and freedom are, it would be wrong to discuss the EU without fully investigating the costs it imposes: costs to the taxpayer, the consumer and business. And by any estimate, those costs are massive.

In our book The Great European Rip-Off, my colleague David Craig and I estimated the total cost to Britain of the EU, once the harmful impacts of its numerous policies and regulations have been taken into account, to be £118 billion a year. That is equal to £1,968 for every man, woman and child – a life-changing amount of money for millions who are currently struggling to make ends meet.

So what is that cost made up of? Up front, we paid the EU £16,398 million of taxpayers’ money directly in 2008: £650 for every person, or £45 million a day. This goes into the central EU budget. Of course, that £16,398 million contribution is a gross figure and the EU are always quick to point out that we receive money back from Brussels in the form of grants.

In fact, in 2008 they were generous enough to hand £9,830 million of our own money back to us. Before accepting that this money should be deducted from any estimated cost of the EU, though, it is worth looking at exactly what those grants are for. You will occasionally see “Funded by the EU” badges stuck on works of public art, stiles, free school diaries or in other places, and the range of things the money is used for is remarkably broad.

On close investigation, the actual list of what those EU grants goes on throws up numerous dubious examples. Meals for industry representatives at swanky restaurants, thousands of promotional items like fridge magnets and key rings, £460,000-worth of media training for EU officials based in London, video podcasts about EU events, and even a project run by an actors’ union to combat discrimination against elderly female actors – all are counted as grants to Britain from the EU, which we are expected to be grateful for.

The direct contribution to the central EU budget is just the beginning, though. On top of the cost of funding an army of well-paid bureaucrats in Brussels, the British taxpayer also foots the bill for a cohort of public servants employed by our own Government to implement and oversee the EU’s rules and regulations. With the EU in control of business, trade, environment, agriculture, fisheries, migration and more, a sizeable portion of each Government department effectively works for Brussels.

Those regulations themselves generate a large bill for all of us indirectly, too. Having paid Brussels to come up with so many rules, and having funded people in Whitehall to administrate them, we as consumers, employees and shareholders then have to bear the cost of abiding by it.

EU regulation touches just about every level of every industry. If you want to build something, grow something, mince something, scrap something, recycle something, burn something, paint something, bake something, package something or do a myriad of other things, there is a sheaf of densely typed regulations just for you. In total, red tape from Brussels adds another £100 billion of lost income, extra expenditure and forfeited economic growth to the bill.

The EU’s policies on food production have been particularly disastrous. The Common Fisheries Policy has had a horrendous impact economically, socially and environmentally. Almost 100,000 jobs have been lost in fishing and dependent industries, leading to increased social security bills in devastated fishing communities. Because fishing boats are banned from bringing home fish that exceed their quotes, even if they are caught accidentally, 880,000 tonnes of dead fish are dumped into the North Sea every year. With the fish supply reduced by these quotas and by the radical reduction of fish stocks, prices at the till are increased to the tune of £4.7 billion a year – £186 a year per family.

The same goes for the Common Agricultural Policy. A huge proportion of the EU’s annual budget is spent on dishing out subsidies to European farmers, whose sales are protected by tariff barriers which effectively tax much non-European produce out of the market. On top of our direct taxpayer-funded subsidy, the CAP costs the British consumer an extra £5.3 billion on their food bills.

There are numerous other examples of waste. The VAT system is so dysfunctional that it loses £80 billion of taxpayers’ money a year through carousel fraud. The EU’s libraries are so overfunded and underused that each book loan costs £570. A leaked copy of the secret report by auditor Robert Galvin that we published earlier this year revealed financial irregularities in the accounts of the majority of MEPs in the European Parliament . The list goes on.

Of course, there is heated debate about the actual cost of the EU when everything is taken into account. Various estimates have been produced, ranging from that of the Conseil d’Analyse Economique, which is chaired by the French Prime Minister and which failed to identify any trade benefits from the Single Market or the Euro, to that of the Swiss Federal Government which concluded that joining the EU would cost between six and eight times more than their current relationship with Brussels.

The striking thing is that no Government has yet demonstrated in a fully detailed assessment that the EU is of overall benefit to its members.

Remarkably, even the EU itself has failed to produce any convincing figures to demonstrate the benefits of the organisation. Commissioner Gunter Verheugen estimated in 2006 that the cost of regulation to the European economy as a whole is £405 billion a year, while the Commission itself believes that between 1986 and 2002 the Single Market only brought benefits of £110 billion. Even after taking inflation into account, that means that the EU Commission itself believes the costs are three times larger than the benefits.

When weighing up any activity, it is sensible to work out how much it costs and what benefits it brings. If you join a club, you would expect the perks received in return to be worth at least the cost of your membership. If they were not, then you wouldn’t join – there are better things you could do with your money without such a costly middle man.

The more one looks into the costs and benefits of the EU, the more it seems like just such a rip-off. All the data suggests that it is a hugely expensive club which provides very little in return for your membership fee. As hotly as the EU’s cheerleaders try to discredit any and every figure produced that casts it in a negative light, it is impossible to ignore that the weight of evidence suggests overwhelmingly that the EU is a net cost for Britain.

It would be perfectly easy, of course, to settle the debate once and for all: the British Government could carry out its own cost/benefit analysis. Strangely, whenever that proposal has been put to government ministers they have blathered, obfuscated and then refused to carry one out. The unwillingness of a Government which believes, as Gordon Brown put it, that “we benefit from our membership of the European Union” to do the sums that would prove or disprove that assertion once and for all is suspicious and telling.

One of the first acts of an incoming Conservative Government should be to carry out just such a comprehensive cost/benefit analysis. If David Cameron wishes to balance the books and help the economy, he must address the vast costs of the EU.

Matthew Elliott

Matthew Elliott is chief executive of the TaxPayers’ Alliance and co-author of ‘The Great European Rip-Off’ (Random House)

Here’s a video by Daniel Hannan (an MEP) about the benefits of being in the EU.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IiFFAcfkeOQ&feature=related

Matthew Elliott doesn’t say what the costs would be to us if we do leave the EU in terms of how will it affect imports and exports? Will they become more expensive?

Will other EU countries refuse to trade with us?

Elliott doesn’t say what the economic impact is envisaged to be. It’ll be no good us leaving and each person saving approx £1600 if it means the cost of food and living goes up due to increased export and import tax.