eurealist.co.uk

Alternatives to EU Membership

The British Government is the servant of the British people, which means that our system, places the sovereignty of the people at the very centre of our democracy, for this system to survive our government cannot pass power to a supranational body to make our laws, otherwise they have effectively removed the sovereignty of the people to elect and dismiss our lawmakers

Denis Mac Shane in the Telegraph is trying to argue that we cannot cherry pick which EU laws to obey and which to ignore, he is trying to equate an international treaty between sovereign states that retain all their own powers, but agree to cooperate when and where they wish for as long or as short time as they wish, on the clear understanding that no government can bind any successive government the people elec. With passing powers to make new laws to the EU which is a supranational body and with the acquis communautaire attached to any powers passed to the Union.

Mac Shane`s argument is a total nonsense, the two things are completely different, in the first instance the sovereign states can at any time change any agreements they may have made, or they can annul those agreements and the agreement no longer then has any power. In the second, once a power has been passed to the EU we can do nothing about any subsequent laws the EU may enact, we are bound to put those laws into our own law, without having any opportunity to agree, disagree or change those laws.

Mac Shane says;
“International law, whether contained in EU treaties or in any other treaty, is a constraint, at times irritating, and is sometimes ignored by nations that do not have the same respect for the rule of law as centuries of obedience to law have dunned into every British citizen.
Yet British citizens cannot pick and choose which bits of the law they will obey. Similarly, Britain cannot pass legislation that conflicts with international treaties, such as the EU treaties, without being in breach of its solemn treaty obligations. Those who call for national legislation to put Britain in breach of EU treaties are within their rights to make their case.
But a nation cannot stay in the EU, or any other treaty organisation, on the basis of obeying - and expecting other nations to obey - clauses it likes, but then pass national legislation unilaterally to exempt Britain from parts of the treaties all other treaty members abide by”.

For the British people the point is not international law, but our own law, in other words our government may not make a law or an international agreement that undermines our law, and membership of the EU does exactly that. We now come to the fact that as we cannot maintain the British system within the EU, there are two alternatives; one, we change our system and remove our sovereignty or two we leave the EU, Denis Mac Shane and his likes of course would not consider the second option, but his argument that we must obey all EU laws ignores the British system, so he is quite happy to destroy a thousand years of history on the alter of an EU super state, and will not look at any alternatives.

However for us to say we must leave this undemocratic Union to its own devices, is not enough, we must then look at other alternatives, and which ever way you look at it if the EU does survive we in Britain will have to deal with it in some manner.

As Europhiles are so fond of telling us a certain amount of our trade is with the EU states, and to trade with them we are going to have to comply with their rules on standards, but the same argument also holds good for trade with any other country, and ever since sovereign states began to make laws on the standards of produce allowed to be sold to their populations this has been the case. Ignoring the fact that Britain is quite capable of standing on her own feet and making any trade agreement with any other country there is bound to be some interaction at a deeper level with the EU.

Ian Milne of Global Britian has looked at some of the alternatives to full membership of the EU which would allow Britian to decide its own destiny and allow the return of power to the people we elect, but still have some links to the EU. Of course to trade with the EU we do not need to have any formal links other than those freely entered into by all the other countries in the world.

The alternatives are
The European Free Trade Association
The European Economic Area
The Swiss-EU Trading Relationship

The European Free Trade Association
EFTA, founded in 1960, is now 40 years old. It comprises four non-EU European states, Switzerland, Norway, Iceland and Liechtenstein, with a combined population of 12.2 million. Its combined GDP of $ 544 billion (at 2003 current prices and exchange rates) is bigger than that of Australia, or South Korea, or the Netherlands, and slightly smaller than that of Mexico. Approximately 70 per cent of its exports and imports of goods are with EU-25. Switzerland, Norway and Iceland have their own currencies; Liechtenstein uses the Swiss Franc. Switzerland and Norway have higher per capita GDPs than all EU-25 member states except Luxembourg. Norway’s per
capita GDP (at 2003 current prices and exchange rates) is 64% higher, and Switzerland’s 46% higher, than that of the UK. Norway’s per capita GDP is 82% higher than that of the Eurozone.2 The current updated EFTA free trade agreement (known as the Vaduz Convention) came into force in 2002 and provides for the free movement amongst the four member states of goods (except for agricultural and fishing products), services, capital and people.
None of the four member states has transferred any legislative competence to EFTA or EEA institutions, so that decisions in EFTA (or on the EFTA side in the EEA) are taken by unanimity. Thus (in contrast to the supra-national nature of EU institutions), sovereignty remains unequivocally with each of the four EFTA member states.
EFTAis a free trade association whose members undertake to trade freely with each other. It is not (as is the EU) a customs union, so each of its members retains full control of its trade relations with other countries (including with fellow-EFTA members). Unlike individual EU members, which do not negotiate or vote in World Trade Organisation (WTO) councils, having transferred such competence to the Commission, each EFTA member sits and votes at the WTO in its own right. EFTA members have free trade agreements (FTAs) with EU-25, Norway, Iceland and Liechtenstein through the EEA,
Switzerland through seven sectoral bilateral FTAs with the EU (see over). Beyond the EU, EFTA had FTAs in force in June 2004 with 13 countries, and is in various stages of negotiation with a further 35 countries, making a total, if they all come off, of 48.

The European Economic Area
The EEA unites the twenty-five EU member states and three EFTA states, Norway, Iceland and Liechtenstein (but NOT Switzerland) in a 28-member Internal Market governed by the same basic rules, which are set out in the EEA Agreement. This is an international treaty which came into force in 1994. Its signatories are on the one hand the EU and its member states, and on the other hand Norway, Iceland and Liechtenstein.
Excluded from the EEA Agreement are the following policy areas, sovereignty over which (in contrast to the position of the EU-25 member states) remains with each of the
three EEA-EFTA states:-
􀁑 Common Agricultural Policy
􀁑 Common Fisheries Policy
􀁑 Foreign & Security (Defence) Policies
􀁑 Justice & Home Affairs Policies
􀁑 Customs Union
􀁑 Monetary Union
EFTA-EEA states make a financial contribution to EEA and EU programmes. For 2004, the total amount will be €363 million, equivalent to a per capita contribution of €74
(approximately four times smaller than the present annual UK per capita gross contribution to EU institutions and that is set to rise to double the present amount in the near future).

The Swiss-EU Trading Relationship
Switzerland is an EFTA member but remains outside the EEA. In 1972 Switzerland and the then EC signed an FTA (Free Trade Agreement) for industrial goods, and in 1986 a scientific cooperation framework agreement. In addition, in 2002, seven sector-specific (or sectoral) bilateral Swiss-EU FTAs came into force, The agreements can be cancelled at any time, and none requires the transfer of legislative authority to a supranational body. Thus, Switzerland retains full sovereign control over the areas covered in the sector-specific FTAs. The agreements are linked, so that cancelling one would also cancel the others. The seven agreements are managed by joint Swiss-EU committees whose decision-making powers are prescribed in the agreements. Decisions are taken by unanimity: each side retains a veto. With the partial exception of the civil aviation agreement, none of the FTAs obliges Switzerland to adopt the relevant part of the acquis communautaire.