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the single market
When Europhiles claim that the EU has brought prosperity to Europe, they are usually referring to the single market – the ability of EU member states to trade freely with each other without tariff barriers. Indeed, a trading bloc of this kind is all the EU was when it was set up (at which point it was called the European Economic Community) and all it was in 1975 when the British public agreed to join. Documents recently released under the 30 year rule show that then Prime Minister Edward Heath knew full well that political union was the ultimate goal, but deliberately misled British voters since he knew they would not support this.
Like many of the achievements the EU claims for itself (eg 60 years without war) the prosperity argument does not stand up to much scrutiny. Firstly, the supposedly free trade within the EU is in fact distorted by the huge subsidies of the CAP, which insulate small and inefficient farms from economic reality. Secondly, free trade within Europe comes at a price of being unable to trade freely with the rest of the world due to the EU's external tariff barriers, damaging to Europe but disastrous for the third world (click here for more details).
Thirdly, of course, free trade is possible without the loss of sovereignty that comes with EU membership. All over the world (eg Mercosur in South America, and indeed EFTA in Europe) countries have agreed to trade freely with their neighbours but continue to govern themselves as independent nations. Quite apart from the damage to democracy, Brussels loads European businesses with extra costs that far outweigh the benefits of the single market. Commission Vice President Günter Verheugen admitted in October 2006 that EU standardisation now costs businesses €600 billion a year. On the Commission’s own statistics, this is nearly four times as much as the €180 billion savings generated by the single market.
The trouble is that the free trade was never Brussels' true aim, only a Trojan horse that took them one step nearer their goal of full political union. Firstly, they abolished tariff barriers between EU countries. Ah, they then said, but there's no point in abolishing tariffs if different countries still have different trading standards, as these would effectively prevent countries trading freely. So they demanded the right to impose common trading standards across the EU. Pretty soon Brussels was legislating in areas that are nothing at all to do with trade. If the proposed Constitution were ratified, Brussels would be setting policy in the areas of transport, energy, public health, trade, employment, social policy, competition, agriculture, fisheries, defence, foreign affairs, asylum and immigration, criminal justice and even space exploration (click here for more details).
"There is no question
of eroding any national sovereignty; there is no blueprint for a
federal Europe. There are some in this country who fear that in
going into Europe, we shall in some way sacrifice independence and
sovereignty. These fears, I need hardly say, are completely unjustified."
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"Of course, yes." |