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Transcript15 lines
- [00:00]
A
Hello, welcome to the hot Seat. I'm Martin Rogers. I'm here with Maya Rasmussen from the LSE to talk about the EU and British attitudes towards it. Maya, welcome.
- [00:09]
B
Thank you.
- [00:10]
A
What is it the British don't like about the EU and how does this fit into the context of the other countries within the eu?
- [00:18]
B
Well, generally you can distinguish between hard Euroscepticism and soft Euroscepticism in the UK. So we saw last week that YouGov, they did an opinion poll where they asked people about whether they wanted to withdraw from the EU or not. And 49 of the people they asked said that they would like the UK to withdraw. So that's obviously a very hard Euroscepticism that they would like to leave the eu. You saw it in the Tory Party last year where 81 Tory MPs voted to have a referendum on British membership with the eu. So that's one element. But there's also another element. Generally when you talk about Euroscepticism, researchers such as Katerina Sanssen distinguish between four types of Euroscepticism. So you could have economic euroscepticism where you do a cost benefits like you hear in the media in the uk, where you look at how much you pay into the budget and how much do you get back and where the UK is paying a lot into the budget, but they don't get so much back in terms of farm subsidies and subsidies from regional funds. Then you have sovereignty based euroscepticism where you are for a single market but you are against any supranational elements of the eu. Then you have a democratic euroscepticism where you think that the EU is not democratic enough and citizens, they feel that their voices are not heard. And lastly you have a social euroscepticism where you feel that the EU is not social enough, that it's more of a neoliberal trait undertaking, but it's not social enough. And that is a Euroscepticism that you find in France. But what is interesting in the UK is that the UK or the British citizens have a very strong sovereignty based Euroscepticism and they have a more soft economic euroscepticism. So mainly what the British population is against according to Euro barometer surveys, is the supranational aspects of the EU membership and to some extent also the aspects that we pay more into the budget than we get back, but we don't have a social Euroscepticism and we only have very limited democratic euroscepticism in the EU or sorry in the uk and.
- [02:32]
A
How legitimate are those concerns? Do you think the British public are right to be wary of the economic and sovereignty based arguments that people feel?
- [02:43]
B
Absolutely. I mean, all of these types of US scepticism are very legitimate. What we sometimes tend to forget in this country is that the UK has a big influence in the EU. So we have 73 MEPs in the European Parliament, which is about 10% of all the seats in the European Parliament. The UK together with Germany and Italy, got the highest voting shares in the Council, where you have the national ministers being represented. So the UK is quite influential, both in tangible terms, in terms of the voting weights and the seats it holds, but also in the more intangible terms in that it has been quite successful in, for instance, influencing the way that utility networks has been liberalized in the eu. So it has placed a great role in paving the way for liberalization of these utility markets.
- [03:33]
A
So the UK has been so far very influential. What would happen to the UK influence if the settlement was renegotiated and what are the pressures, prospects for a renegotiation of any sort of settlement treaties with the eu, as some of the, as you say, soft Eurosceptics are arguing for in this country, a renegotiation?
- [03:58]
B
Well, what is happening at the moment is that David Cameron has started this competence review where he had asked all the departments of the government to do somehow a cost benefit or do a review of the EU membership in all of these different policy areas that the EU participates. Sorry, that the UK participates in. But what we tend to forget is that it's extremely difficult to get a treaty deal in Brussels. I mean, we saw that with the constitutional treaty that got rejected in France and the Netherlands and then subsequently you had the Lisbon Treaty. It was very drawn out process that took many, many years to get to an agreement on. And in the eu, whenever you make treaty changes, you need unanimity among the EU's 27 member states. So it's increasingly, by scientists or political scientists seen as a nuclear option in the sense that it's very difficult to make treaty changes and it would also be quite difficult for other member states to accept if the UK wanted to repatriate some of the power it has linked to the eu.
- [05:01]
A
Is that likely to leave an in out referendum as the only option is if there is little prospect of a renegotiation, is it likely that we are going to end up in a wholly in or wholly out position? And maybe that will be what goes to the referendum? You think it's unlikely that There would be a third option, a renegotiated settlement.
- [05:27]
B
Well, one could imagine that for instance, in justice and Home affairs, where the UK got what is called an opt in, so it chooses on a case by case basis whether it wants to opt in or opt out on new justice and Home affairs measures. So it got this almost like an a la carte menu where the UK can choose the dishes that it likes to consume. And one could imagine in that area, for instance, that the UK could decide to opt out of more areas. But that would generally perhaps not be in the interest of the UK government. But it would be very difficult generally to renegotiate the terms of the UK membership, because you would need unanimity among all 27 member states. So what has also been debated is what would happen if the UK decided to leave the EU altogether. And there we can look at the situation of Norway, Liechtenstein and Iceland, and we can look at the situation of Switzerland, because they have very particular relations with the EU as outside eu. Sorry, as outside members of the eu. So Norway, for instance, is not a member of the eu, but they're part of what is called the European Economic Area. So they participate in the single market and they adopt all of the different directives and regulations that the EU decides on and adopts and they have to implement it, but they're not part in deciding. So in a way, Norway is relegated to a little bit of a lobbyist, where it's decision shaper by trying to influence member states, but it's not a decision maker. And you could see the situation of Norway, which might be a situation the UK could find itself in, as being some sort of fax democracy whereby Brussels faxes all the latest developments and all the latest agreed measures to Norway. And then they would have to implement it, but they don't actually decide upon it. So that would be one option. Another option would be an option like Switzerland, where Switzerland got a free trade bilateral agreement with the eu. So it doesn't participate in everything concerning the single market, but it's more negotiated on a case by case basis. And what is different from that option compared to Norway is that in Norway the country participates in all single market measures and it also participates, sorry, it has to implement social and employment policies. And Switzerland participates in much of the single market, but it doesn't participate or implement rules on social and employment affairs. And that could perhaps be of interest to the UK government, because the UK government has been quite critical towards the social employment policies being adopted in the eu, such as the Working Time Directive. And the Agency Worker Directive, there's no.
- [08:22]
A
Way seen to get a good deal out of it. Is that somewhere that the UK would be realistically aiming to emulate, do you think?
- [08:34]
B
Well, the UK would lose influence politically if it goes for either the option that Switzerland has or that Norway has. Of course, the UK is a very important member state of the eu. It has a big voting weight in the Council, it has many MEPs, it's quite influential. So it would no longer be able to influence EU decisions from the inside and would no longer necessarily be kept abreast on the latest developments in the eu. So it would somehow be relegated to a lobbyist and would have to whizz around in the corridors of the EU institutions to find out what is actually going on. So it would lose political influence while it would still have to implement all the product and process standards that the EU decides upon, because the EU decent is a big trading partner of the UK, so approximately half of the UK's export goes to EU countries, and in order to continue doing that, they would need to comply with process and product standards of the eu.
- [09:33]
A
In searching for greater sovereignty outside of the eu. It's quite possible that the uk, by leaving the eu, would in fact have less sovereignty than it does at the moment because it would not be able to influence those decisions so centrally.
- [09:48]
B
Yeah, it will definitely lose influence on laws that it would have to implement anyway, but would not have a vote.
- [09:53]
A
Upon in that case. Maya Rasmussen, thank you very much. You're off the hot seat.