I came across this very interesting article (HERE) published by Edinburgh University's European Futures website about what the EU is like for non-members in Europe, as we are likely to be in a few years. The point of the article is that the EU has become so large and powerful that it completely dominates Europe or has hegemony over it as the article puts it.
Countries like Norway and Switzerland have voluntarily entered into agreements where they accept EU rules and directives and shape their laws to be directly equivalent to EU laws. They have allowed the EU to have hegemony in Europe. If we leave the EU and do not become part of EFTA or the EEA and we even exit the customs union (as we must if we are to sign separate trade agreements) we will be the only European nation to be completely independent of the EU. But in practice, how independent would we really be?
We would have to abide by a lot of EU rules if we are to continue to trade with them. Our financial services sector would have to show equivalence with EU financial regulation. There is bound to continue to be cross border cooperation on environmental issues as well as security. EU citizens in the UK will almost certainly continue to enjoy the same rights as they do now and UK citizens in the EU will have reciprocal rights.
The UK will therefore ipso facto be forced to accept many rule changes and new directives but will have little or no influence in shaping them. The article puts it this way:
"What is peculiar about the form of dominance that the associated non-members experience is that it is both structural and at the same time voluntary. It is an arrangement that accidentally inhibits and intimidates the parties. The management of externalities and collective action problems created by interdependence is skewed by a European political order in favour of full members of the EU. By being excluded from common decision-making procedures, the citizens of the associated states find themselves as second-rate Europeans".
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