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UK clothing sales to EU plummet as Brexit red tape deters exporters
(www.theguardian.com)
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this post was submitted on 05 Jun 2024
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They're no longer citizens of a nation state which is a member of the EU.
And that helps them how?
For a start it means that the structure of the government better reflects the concerns of the population. The EU never really made much of a dent in the consciousness of Britons. I expect the number of citizens who knew the name of their MEP off the top of their head would be dwarfed by the number of citizens who knew the name of their MP. This is in comparison to continental countries, particularly in my mind Germany, where the EU, EU political parties and MEPs are very much present in the minds of the electorate. At least, that was my experience.
Also, in my view the EU is quite undemocratic. The separate Council, Commission and Parliament are an affront. Especially the fact that the Parliament, which represents the electorate, does not have the power to introduce legislation. The people are an inconvenient afterthought in the EU power structure. I'm afraid I can't find a link right this second but somewhere I have a copy of an interview with Yanis Varoufakis when he was finance minister for Greece back when they had their economic meltdown where he says that he was told by others around the halls of EU power that "the people" should not be given the power to decide economic policy. That, to me, is the EU. The British people are better off out of it.
EU Regional Development Funds are another horror. They're run by unelected bureaucrats, stepping on the toes of existing, democratically elected regional institutions like.. councils. Instead of giving hundreds of millions to councils for development projects, or even creating larger regional institutions with democratically elected leadership, someone thought it would be a good idea to give those millions to unelected bureaucrats to spend in the same area. I'm still mystified as to how this ever came to pass. Brexit couldn't come soon enough.
Edit: Found the interview. Here's the full quote from Varoufakis, talking about the impending referendum on whether to accept European proposals regarding Greece's debt: [in the event that the referendum accepts the European proposals] "I am not going to impede its progress through parliament. This is my commitment to democracy and my commitment to the people, that I have entrusted with the decision, with the verdict of yes/no, or no, in a way that has incensed my colleagues in the Euro group who don't believe that 'such complex matters', as I've been told, 'should be put to common folk'." -- https://youtu.be/OmqnYHmRg48?t=625
You do realise that the entire structure of the EU was primarily dreamt up by British legal experts? It's quite literally one of the best, most robust and most competent systems of governance in the world.
Yes, Parliament can't introduce legislation by themselves, but that's because we don't want populists like Farage, Boris or Trump to do that. They're charismatic, but not actually competent. That's why talented legal experts in the European Commission (who are each appointed by elected governments of member states, the UK had 6 iirc), people who actually know how law works, write the laws. The elected MEP's vote on the laws.
However even here we're missing the fact that the European Parliament (EP) do have a say in the legislation. The EC writes an "Impact Assessment" with rough draft of the law they're thinking of writing (which anyone can comment on), then this is presented before Parliament who propose and discuss amendments. So it's completely disingenuous to imply that the elected EP is somehow beholden to the "unelected" (but chosen for competency by elected member governments) EC bureaucrats.
And all that skips around what starts the EC's initial proposal. Aside from occassionally writing laws off their own backs, the EC responds to requests from:
That's right, not only can Parliament demand new legislation (they just have to get the big boy lawyers to write it for them), but individual citizens can directly!
Parliament has the final say in whether or not legislation is implemented. That's completely democratic. What you call "an affront" is actually competent people writing effective legislation. Rather than bullshit like the Rwanda deal which states the UK will accept vulnerable refugees from Rwanda in exchange for the small boat migrants to Rwanda (all paid for by the UK taxpayer), or the general ineptitude of no legislation at all and a Hard Brexit causing issues like sewage being dumped in our rivers since water companies now face restrictions on importing treatment chemicals from the EU.
LOL
As I understand it, the Parliament does not have the power to compel the Commission to introduce legislation. The Parliament can make requests (not "demands") but the Commission has the power to say "no" to those requests. This is critical.