European Union

DRAFT OPINION on Women’s Rights in the Eastern Partnership States and other neighbouring countries
Committee on Foreign Affairs
Pier Antonio Panzeri

Source : © European Union, 2016 - EP

No relent in European news overnight. One state of emergency was declared in Turkey – suspending rights and giving president Recep Tayyip Erdogan near unlimited power – while another was prolonged in France, where the government is facing a harder time asserting its authority. Britain’s Theresa May met Angela Merkel for the first time, easing Brexit pressure on the UK a touch and prompting a journalistic scramble to find more similarities between the two leaders (a love of hill walking has been uncovered). Italy is racing to find creative answers to its banking woes and Matteo Renzi’s political quandary – while Italy’s populists call for taxpayer bailouts. And another Italian, Mario Draghi, will be forced to wrestle with his policy demons in public as the European Central Bank holds its monthly meeting. Oh, and happy Belgian national day.

Erdogan’s rule

 

Three months of emergency powers The move was announced following back to back national security council and cabinet meetings. Erdogan said: “As the president and commander in chief elected by the people of this country, I will take forward the struggle to cleanse our armed forces of this virus…The aim of this action is to quickly and effectively eliminate the threat to democracy in our country, the rule of law, and the rights and freedom of our citizens.”

What does it enable? Not since the martial law of the early 1980s has Turkey been subject to such unchecked central power. The FT’s Mehul Srivastava explains that it allows Mr Erdogan’s cabinet to issue decrees that take immediate effect and are not subject to review by the constitutional court (two judges on that court are among the 2,750 removed in the purge against suspected supporters of Fethullah Gulen, an Islamic cleric who Mr Erdogan blames for instigating the coup).

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General : From Pinterest to LinkedIn, the European Parliament is present on most major social media platforms in order to better communicate with you. On these platforms we offer not only background information and the latest news, but also videos, photos, infographics and the opportunity to discuss topical issues. We also offer EP Newshub: our special tool to follow Parliament politics in real time. Try out our interactive infographic to get a taster of what we serve up on each platform.

Source : © European Union, 2016 - EP

General : From Pinterest to LinkedIn, the European Parliament is present on most major social media platforms in order to better communicate with you. On these platforms we offer not only background information and the latest news, but also videos, photos, infographics and the opportunity to discuss topical issues. We also offer EP Newshub: our special tool to follow Parliament politics in real time. Try out our interactive infographic to get a taster of what we serve up on each platform.

Source : © European Union, 2016 - EP

The momentous decision to opt for exit from the European Union that was made by a slim majority of the British public on 23 June immediately will have long-lasting effects which will linger for years to come. The immediate result of the Brexit decision was profound domestic political and economic turmoil in the UK. This is likely to be followed by years of insecurity for both the UK and the rest of the EU as the new British government led by Theresa May prepares to enter into difficult exit negotiations.

The outcome of the referendum is not surprising for anyone who is familiar with the evolvement of the domestic political debate on EU membership in the UK. Overall the British public has never been at ease with their country’s membership of the European Economic Community (EEC) and later the European Union. The exception is Scotland, where membership of the EU continues to be considered as an opportunity to enhance the region’s autonomy. The UK joined the EEC in 1973 mainly for economic reasons. The British economy had slipped in and out of recession during the 1960s while growth rates in the six Common Market countries were comparatively strong. The UK had reluctantly applied to join twice in the 1960s and both times was vetoed by French president De Gaulle. De Gaulle was concerned that as a member the UK would try to fundamentally change the nature of the EC towards a loose free trade area. Moreover he was convinced that American influence in the EC would grow once Britain was on the inside. After De Gaulle’s departure the new French president Pompidou had shown a more pragmatic attitude towards British membership. This allowed the Conservative government under Edward Heath to take Britain into the EEC on 1 January 1973. Heath, an ardent pro-European, was convinced that the economic benefits of membership of the Common Market would outweigh the political costs of joining a Community that had been predominantly shaped by France and Germany and where the UK would immediately turn into a net budget contributor. Heath famously stated that the UK would be ‘part of Europe by geography, tradition, history an civilization’[i].

Initially it seemed as if the majority of the British public were beginning to warm to Heath’s view. At the first membership referendum held by the Labour government under Harold Wilson on 5 June 1975 67.5 per cent of voters opted to stay in the EEC. The referendum was the result of the deepening divisions within the Labour Party towards the EEC. The eurosceptic left wing of the party led by Tony Benn rejected EEC membership on the basis that the Community would be a capitalist club that was making it impossible to implement a socialist political agenda in the UK. In contrast the Conservatives remained the pro-European party with even the new Conservative opposition leader Margaret Thatcher campaigning strongly for staying inside the Common Market in the 1975 referendum campaign. This changed drastically after Thatcher had become prime minister in 1979. Once in office she realised that her priority for market liberalisation was at odds with the Franco-German desire to deepen the political integration of the Community. Thatcher therefore adopted an increasingly non-cooperative attitude and demanded clear red lines to safeguard the UK’s national sovereignty and limit the contributions to the Community budget. At the 1984 Community summit in Fountainebleue Thatcher negotiated a permanent budgetary rebate for the UK by stating that ‘I want my money back’. During her famous speech at the European College in Bruges on 20 September 1998 warned of the dangers of a European federal superstate: ‘We have not successfully rolled back the frontiers of the state in Britain, only to see them re-imposed at a European level with a European super-state exercising a new dominance from Brussels’[ii]. This eurosceptic rhetoric occurred against the background of Thatcher having previously signed up to the Single European Act (SEA). The SEA not included measures to accelerate market liberalisation in the EEC but also laid the foundation for deeper political integration by introducing qualified majority voting for economic and social affairs. Moreover the SEA paved the way for the creation of the European Union and a concrete timetable for the establishment of monetary union under the subsequent Maastricht Treaty.

Thatcher and her followers believed that the main purpose of the EEC should be to act as a free trade area which strengthens trade between the member states. Thatcher mainly blamed Germany for pushing towards the deepening of political integration. She was deeply suspicious of German European policy motives. In her political memoirs Thatcher characterised Germany as a ‘destabilising force’ which would waver between ‘aggression and self-doubt’[iii]. While she was still in office she allowed her Trade and Industry Secretary Nicholas Ridley to characterise the EEC as Germany’s means to subjugate Europe. Ridley equated the transfer of Britain’s national sovereignty to the Community with conceding it to Adolf Hitler[iv]. The tradition of Thatcherite predominantly English euroscepticism has consequently fed itself from the scaremongering about German hegemonial aspirations in the EU. This has been a prominent feature in the eurosceptic tabloid press, especially in papers like The Sun and the Daily Express, where engagement in the EU is persistently portrayed as ‘surrendering’ to foreign interests, most of all those of Germany and France. These sentiments also featured in the recent EU referendum campaign when prominent VoteLeave campaigner Boris Johnson, now Britain’s new foreign secretary, compared the EU with Nazi Germany. On 15 May this year Johnson emphasised in an interview with The Telegraph that it was his belief that the EU shared Nazi Germany’s desire to unify Europe under ‘one authority’, albeit with ‘different methods’[v].  Johnson’s comments reflect the deep-seated hostile perception of the EU and European integration amongst particularly the English public.

This is not only the result the failure of successive governments since Thatcher to make a positive case for British engagement in Europe. Apart from the brief period of constructive rhetoric on the EU during the first parliament of Tony Blair’s New Labour government (1997-2001), who aspired to turn the UK into a leading player in the EU but eventually gave up this ambition over his support for George W. Bush’s military invasion in Iraq, British governments allowed the eurosceptics in the Conservative Party, UKIP and in the media to set the tone of the debate. The fact that the EU has come under almost exclusive semi-hegemonial German leadership since the onset of the eurozone sovereign debt crisis has deepened this euroscepticism across England and now also in Wales. German chancellor Angela Merkel’s relentless drive towards deeper policy coordination in the eurozone and beyond has contributed towards pushing an already sceptical British public further towards the EU’s exit door. David Cameron’s renegotiation of the British membership terms and the subsequent referendum were a response to growing euroscepticism within his own party but also amongst the wider British public, which was illustrated by the electoral successes of the anti-EU United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP).  Cameron chose to adopt a defensive position and to focus on the renegotiation of the membership conditions rather than to try to take a leading role in the EU. He therefore missed the opportunity to challenge Merkel’s dominant position and to promote an alternative reform agenda for the EU. If Cameron had exercised strategic leadership he would have most likely won over France, Poland and other countries in Southern and East-Central Europe, which are critical of the German agenda, as allies to promote institutional reform towards greater subsidiarity and enhanced democratic accountability. Cameron’s defensive strategy instead concentrated on negotiating a permanent British opt out from political integration in the EU. His intention was essentially to ensure that differentiated integration between the eurozone core and the outsiders could be maintained. Cameron argued that ‘far from unravelling the EU, this will in fact bind its members more closely because such flexible, willing cooperation is a much stronger glue than compulsion from the centre’[vi]. In the end Cameron, who lacked both the popular appeal and the intellectual ability to make a convincing pro-European case, was unable to convince a sceptical public in England and Wales to remain in the EU. Cameron had run a lacklustre referendum campaign during which he allowed his chancellor George Osborne to determine a predominantly defensive strategy. The Remain strategy hence concentrated on emphasising the potential negative economic effects of Brexit rather than to make a positive case for staying in. Meanwhile the Vote Leave camp was able to put issues such as migration, contributions to the EU budget and Turkish membership of the EU on the agenda. This ultimately led the majority of voters to the conclusion that staying in the EU would potentially be a greater financial and political risk than leaving.

The public decision in favour of Brexit pushes both the UK and the EU into uncharted waters. Never before has a member state invoked article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty under which a request to leave the EU can be formally submitted to the European Council. The decision is even more profound as the with the UK the third largest member state will exit the EU. This will fundamentally alter the EU’s internal power balance. Without the sustained engagement of the remaining larger countries France,  Poland, Italy and Spain the EU is likely to remain under German semi-hegemony for the foreseeable future, which could contribute to a further rise in euroscepticism. Brexit will also weaken the EU’s external economic and political influence. With the UK the EU loses a vibrant services economy and a net contributor to its budget. Moreover the UK is currently the only country alongside France that is able to make a substantial contribution towards the EU’s military capabilities. These facts should however not mislead Theresa May and her ministers into assuming that the UK can expect substantial concessions during the Brexit negotiations. Once the British government decides to invoke Article 50 the negotiations are expected to be concluded within a period of two years. During this period the UK will negotiate with the remaining 27 member states, which are formally represented by the European Commission, bilaterally as an outsider. In practice this means that ‘the member of the European Council or of the Council representing the withdrawing Member State shall not participate in the discussions of the European Council or Council or in decisions concerning it’[vii]. The EU-27 governments, in cooperation with the Commission and the European Parliament, therefore have the final say over the conditions of the UK’s status after exit from EU. The British government can try to lobby individual governments for favourable conditions but it has no veto over the final deal and also no guarantee that its proposals will be supported.

The remaining EU-27 member states are unlikely to show much goodwill to the new British government led by Theresa May after a referendum campaign in which the Vote Leave applied xenophobic rhetoric and half-truths to win over the public. Although May declared herself to be in favour of the UK remaining in the EU it is well know that she is a moderate eurosceptic. As home secretary May initiated the UK’s gradual withdrawal from the EU’s justice and police cooperation and repeatedly expressed her concerns about the freedom of movement. At the 2015 Conservative Party annual conference May emphasised her belief that ‘the numbers coming from Europe are unsustainable and the rules have to change’[viii]. The new PM has decided to put the Brexit negotiations into the hands of eurosceptic right-wing Conservative David Davis, who will have to work with foreign minister Boris Johnson to secure a deal. EU leaders reacted with bewilderment to the appointment of Johnson and he was widely criticised for his ‘dishonest’ campaign promises on NHS spending and immigration control. Johnson’s comparison of the EU with Nazi Germany particularly angered France and Germany, which was illustrated by the hostile comments of the French and German foreign ministers on Johnson’s appointment[ix].

It is crystal clear that the Vote Leave campaign promises to completely pull the UK out of the EU regulatory domain and to replace the freedom of movement with an Australian style points-based system can only be realised if Britain leaves the Single European Market. This means that in practice Theresa May’s demands to end the freedom of movement comes at the price of having trade tariffs reinstalled between the UK and the EU. Currently none of the countries who are not members of the EU but have full access to the Single Market, has been able to negotiate an opt out from the freedom of movement (with the exception of tiny Lichtenstein). Even if France and Germany proposed to accept concessions on the freedom of movement for the UK after Brexit these proposals would most likely be vetoed by the countries in Central-Eastern Europe, especially Hungary, Poland, Slovakia, Latvia and Lithuania. As a considerable number of citizens from these countries currently reside in the UK their governments are adamant not to jeopardise the freedom of movement to prevent a substantial return migration wave which could hardly be absorbed by the fragile domestic labour markets and would also considerably burden their welfare states. The freedom of movement is consequently the issue upon which the future shape of relations between the UK and the EU will be determined. The Brexit negotiations will be further complicated by the likely demands of the Scottish government for a renewed referendum on the region’s post-Brexit status.

Until the British government formally invokes article 50 and puts concrete proposals for the UK’s post-Brexit status on the table the insecurity about the medium- to long-term consequences of the referendum outcome will remain. The immediate result has been unprecedented domestic political turmoil in the UK with deep internal infighting within the Conservative and the Labour Party. Although the potential future risks of Brexit for the UK and the EU are profound and real they can be avoided if the process is properly managed. This will demand that the May government is willing to compromise on freedom of movement and that the EU-27 governments act in the spirit of collective solidarity instead of negotiating individually with the UK. If the UK manages to maintain full access to the Single Market after Brexit it would help it to avoid profound adverse economic implications for the domestic economy and also for the wider Europe. The IMF has already warned that Brexit is likely to push the UK into recession and to severely undermine economic recovery in Europe and even globally[x].

Ultimately Brexit does not only pose risks but also offers an opportunity for the EU-27 governments to relaunch the European project by working towards implementing profound reforms of the EU’s institutions and decision-making processes with the aims of achieving greater policy efficiency and public legitimacy. Both the UK and the EU-27 governments will need steadfast stewardship to sail through the current tides of insecurity that Brexit has pushed them into to avoid  ending up shipwrecked. If the current leaders in London, Berlin, Paris, Warsaw, Rome and Madrid  are able to provide this stewardship at the end of the day is more than doubtful given their failure to reach a joint approach on resolving major challenges, such as the eurozone and the migration crisis, Ukraine, Syria and more recently Turkey. Brexit therefore remains a scary and unpredictable choice for everyone or, to quote David Cameron, ‘a leap in the dark’.

[i] Quoted from Hugo Young (1998), This blessed plot: Britain and Europe from Churchill to Blair,  London and Basingstoke: MacMillan, p. 220.

[ii] Margaret Thatcher (1988), Speech to the College of Europe. ‘The Bruges Speech’, 20 September, http://www.margaretthatcher.org/document/107332.

[iii] Margaret Thatcher (1993), The Downing Street Years, Glasgow: Harper Collins, p. 791.

[iv] David Gowland and Arthur Turner (2000), Britain and European Integration 1945-1998: A Documentary History, London and New York, p. 178.

[v] Tim Ross (2016), ‘Boris Johnson: The EU wants a superstate, just as Hitler did’, 15 May, available at http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/05/14/boris-johnson-the-eu-wants-a-superstate-just-as-hitler-did/ [accessed 19 July 2016].

[vi] Prime minister David Cameron’s  EU speech at Bloomberg , 23 January 2013, available at https://www.gov.uk/government/speeches/eu-speech-at-bloomberg [accessed 19 July 2016].

[vii] European Union (2012), Consolidated version of the Lisbon Treaty, available at http://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=celex%3A12012E%2FTXT [accessed 19 July 2016].

[viii] Theresa May (2015), Speech to the Conservative Party Conference, 6 October 2015, available at http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/theresa-may-s-speech-to-the-conservative-party-conference-in-full-a6681901.html [accessed 19 July 2016].

[ix] Angelique Chrisafis, Luke Harding and Arthur Neslen (2016), ‘ “Outrageous” and “a liar” – Germany and France lead criticism of Boris Johnson’, 14 July, available athttp://www.theguardian.com/politics/2016/jul/14/french-foreign-minister-boris-johnson-is-a-liar-with-his-back-against-the-wall  [accessed 19 July 2016].

[x] Larry Elliot (2016), ‘IMF cuts UK growth forecasts following Brexit vote’, 20 July, available at https://www.theguardian.com/business/2016/jul/19/imf-cuts-uk-growth-forecasts-following-brexit-vote [accessed 19 July 2016].

The post The EU and Brexit: Sailing in uncharted waters appeared first on Ideas on Europe.

In the wake of the Brexit earthquake, experts are sifting through the rubble, assessing the damage, and checking the stability of remaining structures. Advocates of ambitious climate policy have been particularly active. Since the late 1990s, the UK has been a leader on climate change, both domestically, within the European Union, and through its active role in global negotiations.

But can this be maintained? At home in particular, can it follow the pithy advice of UN climate chief Christiana Figueres who, harking back to the wartime spirit, urged Britain to “stay calm and transform on”?

Yet even if the UK is able to keep its green policies broadly on track, committed politicians and activists should reflect on where best to focus their efforts given so much had been developed through Europe.

Norway or Switzerland?

What happens next will largely depend on how the government renegotiates the country’s relationship with the EU. Participation in the EU’s internal energy market has kept energy costs down and fostered UK energy security. Energy industry insiders regard it as crucial to the UK’s decarbonisation efforts.

One increasingly discussed possibility is the “Norway option”: join the European Economic Area (EEA) and maintain access to the single market without EU membership, in exchange for following many European laws. Under this scenario, the UK would remain subject to the EU Emissions Trading System, the Fuel Quality Directive, and the Renewable Energy Directive among other climate and energy laws, while having no say in their development.

Norway follows EU energy laws, but can’t change them.
V. Belov/Shutterstock

Alternatively, the UK could attempt to strike a complex series of bilateral deals with the EU, while remaining outside of the EEA (what some have termed the “Swiss model”). In this scenario such laws would not necessarily apply, and the UK would likely need to develop its own emissions regulations, renewable targets and so on. Climate legislation would then need to fight for parliamentary time against other priorities. Looser arrangements, involving reverting to World Trade Organisation rules, would present far greater levels of policy uncertainty.

The best-case scenario is therefore likely to involve the UK retaining a close relationship with the EU within the EEA. Although advocates of climate and environmental protection are likely to speak out in favour of joining the EEA, it won’t be their concerns that ultimately decide the outcome. They would be well-advised to engage in some scenario planning both for life inside the EEA, and in a world outside where EU rules have no effective influence.

Leadership by example

Regardless of what the post-Brexit relationship looks like, the UK will no longer be able to participate directly in EU policy-making. Those wishing to maintain the UK’s reputation will have to content themselves with leadership by example, at best.

In a promising development that has eased fears of a post-Brexit “coup” by climate sceptics within the Conservative party, the UK’s Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC) has announced that it will implement the Fifth Carbon Budget, as required by the 2008 Climate Change Act. This means a reduction of 57% in UK carbon emissions from 1990 levels for 2028-32 is now official government policy. Of course, this commitment will not implement itself, and ironically could still be undermined if the EU, now lacking one of its principal climate champions, lags behind in its own target setting. A decision by David Cameron to ratify the Paris agreement on the UK’s behalf before he steps down as prime minister would send a strong signal that the country will not be diverted from its path to decarbonisation.

A continuing challenge will be that the Fifth Carbon Budget and other UK climate policies have been designed assuming that the UK would remain an EU member state. This again highlights the importance of some kind of EEA-based arrangement. In implementing the UK’s own domestic commitments, sustained investment and regulatory stability – of a kind that EU membership broadly provided – will be key. Government ministers must realise that these are severely compromised by the kind of unexpected energy policy “resets” witnessed from the incoming Conservative government after the last election. And in a volatile economic climate, institutions such as the Green Investment Bank may need to increase their efforts to finance investment in renewable energy projects.

Reframing climate policy

NGOs must respond to the likelihood that UK governments will be Conservative-led for the foreseeable future. Given that party’s often unconvincing commitment to climate protection, advocates would do well to frame their efforts not just in terms of climate, but of air quality and jobs too.

Some innovative solutions arguably have potential to mend some of the damage from the referendum. For example, the development of tidal lagoons in Wales has considerable potential both to cut emissions and create jobs. Ambitious deployment of such technology could, according to its advocates, contribute as much power as the proposed – but increasingly untenable – Hinkley C nuclear plant.

The architecture of the UK’s pioneering Climate Change Act of 2008 has so far proved robust to the shock of Brexit. Ensuring that it remains so, and continues to deliver meaningful decarbonisation, will be an enduring concern for many in post-Brexit Britain, and for supporters of ambitious climate policy around the world.

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

The post How the UK can still lead on climate change – even after Brexit appeared first on Ideas on Europe.

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On 17th, the EU and Kuwait signed a Cooperation Arrangement to increase the number of exchanges between officials and promote regular political dialogue and concrete cooperation initiatives.

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On 17th, the EU and Kuwait signed a Cooperation Arrangement to increase the number of exchanges between officials and promote regular political dialogue and concrete cooperation initiatives.

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Since June 23rd volumnes of analysis and comment have already been written in newspapers and online, about the United Kingdom’s decision to leave the European Union as the result of a referendum. However, nobody fully understands all of the consequences of Brexit, as 43 years of treaties – between the United Kingdom and her nearest neighbours – will have to be taken apart. The immediate consequence of the result was that the value of the pound fell.

Once the UK leaves the EU after two or more years of negotiations: British passport holders will have to wait in the queue for “All other passport holders” to enter a member state of the European Union, opposite to the queue they now wait in as “Citizens of the European Union”. If the EU decides to impose visa requirements on British passport holders entering a member state of the EU as a consequence of Brexit, then it means that the status of a British passport has also been devalued. How will the British economy fare by being excluded from the European single market? The 27 remaining members of the EU might not be willing to give British goods and services privileged access to the single market.

Many other benefits of EU membership will be lost for British citizens because of Brexit. These include the Charter of Fundamental rights which protects the human rights of EU citizens by law, and environmental protection policies. The EU has a policy to fight climate change by imposing caps on greenhouse gas emissions. This is part of a policy to create a low-carbon economy as Europe re-invests in renewable forms of energy, and energy storage: to create new jobs to replace jobs lost in tradtional industries.

While the United Kingdom is a member of the EU a British citizen has the right to live, work, and travel in any EU country, but these rights are threatened by Brexit. Will thousands of retired British people living in Spain be forced to return to the UK, because they no longer have the legal right to reside in an EU member state? Will British workers in Germany lose their jobs, because they will no longer have the automatic right to work there?

How much funding will local communities lose throughout the United Kingdom as a result of the decision to leave the EU? European Structural and Investment Funds (ESIF) provide grants for regions in England, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland to help fight climate change with a “Low Carbon” grants; financial help to make small businesses more competitive “SME Support”; support for “Research and Innovation”; and grants that provide “Access to Employment”, and “Learning and Skills”. Details of these EU funded grants can be seen on a UK government website at https://www.gov.uk/european-structural-investment-funds . All of these grants will be terminated once the UK leaves the EU.

It is hard to understand why 52 percent of voters in the EU referendum decided that the UK should leave the EU, when there was so much to lose? The Vote Leave campaign had been very successful in getting its message across, which said to voters in a leaflet: “We send the EU £350 million a week – let’s fund our NHS instead”. However, this claim has been disputed: where did the Vote Leave campaign get the figure of £350 million a week from? And if the UK were to leave the EU, could the British public trust Tory ministers who are committed to austerity and public spending cuts to redirect the UK’s EU membership fees into the NHS and other public services?

Vote Leave effectively used the fear of mass immigration to gather support for the UK to leave the EU. The Vote Leave leaflet said: “Over a quarter of a million people migrate to the UK from the EU every year”. What the leaflet did not say is how many people leave the UK every year in order to move to another EU country?

Another Brexit campaign group, Leave.EU, used other methods to get to the electorate. An article by Robert Booth entitled: “Paul McKenna worked on Leave.EU ads”, (The Guardian, 2nd July 2016), said: “The Brexit campaign enlisted TV hypnotist Paul McKenna to advise some of its campaign broadcasts, it has emerged.”

An anonymous source from the Leave.EU campaign was quoted in the article as saying: “We didn’t hypnotise anyone”. How did this source know that nobody was hypnotised? Perhaps members of the Leave.EU campaign team were also hypnotised, along with the target audience of the campaign broadcasts?

The Guardian article also said, “The hypnotist is said to be a friend of Arron Banks, the Bristol-based multimillionaire insurance businessman who bankrolled the Leave.EU campaign with a £5.6m donation.”

In a separate article entitled “Leave donor plans new party to replace UKIP – possibly without Farage in charge” (The Guardian, 29th June 2016), Arron Banks was quoted as saying: “What they said early on was ‘facts don’t work’ and that’s it. The remain campaign featured fact, fact, fact, fact, fact. You have got to connect with people emotionally. It’s the Trump success.”

The quotation above is a stark admission from a Brexiteer that those voting for the UK to leave the EU were responding to emotional stimulus rather than facts. Under these circumstances people could easily have been made to vote against their own self interest. In considering everything that will be lost by the UK’s departure from the EU, a large part of the electorate were voting for: Brexit austerity; a Brexit recession; the removal of legislation which is there to protect them not only as citizens of the United Kingdom, but also as citizens of the European Union. A vote to leave the EU was a vote for destruction.

Sources

http://europa.eu/about-eu/basic-information/about/index_en.htm

https://www.gov.uk/european-structural-investment-funds

http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2016/jul/01/eu-referendum-leave-hypnotist-paul-mckenna-nigel-farage

©Jolyon Gumbrell 2016

The post A vote for destruction appeared first on Ideas on Europe.

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On 1 January 2016 entered into force the Free Trade Area (DCFTA) between Ukraine and the European Union. The EU is seeking an increasingly close relationship with Ukraine, going beyond co-operation, to gradual economic integration and a deepening of political co-operation. Ukraine is a priority partner country within the European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP).

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Maschek
Freedom of movement for persons
When he himself puts an end to his employment relationship, a worker is entitled to an allowance if he could not use up all or part of his right to paid annual leave