Britain will rejoin the EU within 15 years, former Brussels chief predicts
Britain will rejoin the EU within 15 years, former Brussels chief predicts
‘I’m betting that in 15 years the UK will come back’, Romano Prodi said
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Pretty sure the EU won't let the UK rejoin with the same privileges next time
They better fucking not.
Ashamed to ask as an EU citizen, but did UK have some kind of special founding member privileges or something before? Didn't think we had that in the EU, only the vote by population size stuff.
We do, and Ireland, Denmark and Poland have gotten opt-outs, too (link). The United Kingdom, however, was so extreme about it, that Wikipedia dedicated an entire article just to their opt-outs.
The UK was no founding member of the EU by choice, if I remember correctly. And later on, they only joined due to the financial prospects, not the underlying idea(ls). They always acted as though they were special when they were part of the union (see aforementioned opt-outs) and completely lost it during the Brexit negotiations, when they acted as though they had some sort of leverage over the entire EU. I quite like CGP Grey's video on the topic: youtube.com
In my opinion, the French were right when they didn't want the British to join the union; most of their initial reservations did come true, after all. So, if the UK rejoined the common market without joining the EU, like Norway, for example, that would be fine by me. But no more.
As long as the British do not change their overall stance to the EU much more (and come to terms with their non-specialness), anyway.
The UK joined later.
And yes they did have special concessions (namely a currency opt-out, like Denmark, and a Schengen opt-out, like Ireland and I believe others), although the UK were far from the only ones that had special concessions. E.g. France has a roughly the same sized economy to the UK yet contributed billions less to the budget.
I'm not really sure why people act like the UK is the only country who had concessions. Various countries have all kinds of concessions, and the wealthiest ones typically had more, because they had the most political leverage.
The big ones are currency and the common agricultural policy. Schengen, meh, Britain is an island. There's plenty of EU territory that's not in Schengen what would be important is that Gibraltar joins the area for the simple reason that you can walk there.
The UK is the only country that got a discount on their payments.
Edit: I stand corrected. One of a few
Literally not true at all. France and the UK have a practically identical economy size, but France consistently paid billions less.
You are mistaken if you think countries had leverage to make demands but chose not to use it out of charity.
I found a list, and while I was indeed wrong, as there are other rebates, France is not on the List.
I don't know which numbers you are citing, but if you look at net contributions, payments from the EU to the members may of course also vary.
The UK was the first country to receive a discount though.
Not being part of the same rebate scheme does not mean France didn't pay less.
It literally does. France does not receive a rebate on the normal calculation by gross national income.
France did receive more EU payouts than the UK in the past ( Example from 2017 ), leading to lower net payments. That's not the same as paying less in the first place though.
You're confirming that France pays less in.
Obviously I'm talking about Net. Gross doesn't matter. If a man puts 1€ into a box and gets 1€ back, he's not really paid anything.
You're confirming that France pays less in.
I'm not. They paid more in fact. They just also got more back out.
Obviously I'm talking about Net. Gross doesn't matter.
Wrong. What a country pays in and what it gets out are two entirely unrelated questions.
Payments to the EU are calculated by GDI and that's that (except when there is a rebate). They are supposed to be fair based on that metric.
Payments back to the members are not "free money" the government can spend on whatever. They are subsidies bound to specific purposes that have their own specific criteria of distribution. They are not designed to be fair by comparison of GDI or similar metrics. If there were, as a hypothetical example, an EU program to subsidize local winemakers, you can see how France would very likely receive more money out of this fund than the UK.
The UK wasn't a founding member.
A major point the others fail to mention is that they got a special discount on their contributions to the EU Budget.
This reduction amounts to roughly 66% of the difference between the UK's contributions to, and receipts from, the EU budget
I think they would, since once UK joins any other state considering leaving can just be shown UK's example if she had joined EU, it could be said it was with tail between her legs.