Eurofacts 3^rd December 2004

Vol 10 - No 4

What happens if Britain votes ‘No’?

Rejecting the Constitution would enable the UK to work out a new deal with the EU-on highly favourable terms.

By Daniel Hannan

The following article is based on Voting on the Constitution: What Britain should know about the consequences by Daniel Hannon MEP published by Politeia

Price £7 www.junepress.comm

What would happen if Britain voted “No” to the EU Constitution while most or all other countries wanted to go ahead?

Would the other heads of government tear up the draft in deference to the British? And, if not, where we are would not be an option, since the existing treaties would no longer exist: They would all be folded into the New Constitution. So we should presumably have to negotiate a different relationship with those [Member-] States that wanted to adopt the Constitution.

Europe’s leaders have been admirably frank in spelling this out. Jacques Chirac, Gerhard Schroder, Valery Giscard d’Estaing and others have made it clear that, if Britain persisted in rejecting the draft, the other countries would offer it a form of associate membership of the Free Market [In otherwise we would be back to 1975 to an EEC -an economic and not a political union] but not on the new political structures.

The Commissioner who has gone furthest in adumbrating exactly how this would work is Pascal Lamy, who held the trade portfolio, Britain he said, would be offered a status rather like Switzerland’s.

Since this is the clearest definition we have, it is worth looking at exactly how Switzerland - and its three EFTA partners, Iceland, Norway and Liechtenstein - manage their relations with the EU.

These States are not identical, of course. Each one has struck its own deal with Brussels. In particular, there are important differences between Iceland, Norway and Liechtenstein, which maintain their relationship of the single market through the European Economic Area, and Switzerland, which does so through a series of bilateral treaties. None the less, they have several characteristics in common.

The EFTA States are all covered by the four freedoms of the single market:

Free movement, that is of goods, services people and capital.

They are able to opt into other common policies on a case-by-case basis, whether on research and development.

Classification of medicines.

Border- free travel or whatever.

Yet they are spared the huge costs and inefficiencies of the CAP -Common Agricultural Policy.

They are free to control their own fisheries.

Their own energy reserves.

They are able to sign Free Trade Deals with Third Countries.

They are outside EU Social and Employment Regulation.

(All of it, in the case of Switzerland)

They have their own Foreign policies, immigration controls.

Their own Legal Systems and Civil Rights.

Their Parliaments are Sovereign.

And they pay only a token amount to the EU Budget.

[We would not expect Britain to give even a token amount after all we have been bled dry by the EU for over 30 years]

[Whoever negotiates the new arrangements they must be selected from those who have had no hand in previous Treaties, as their traitorous designs will no doubt return-once a Traitor always a Traitor]

Unsurprisingly the EFTA countries are considerably wealthier than the EU States. Indeed their citizens are, on average, more than twice as rich as those in the EU. Every EFTA country has a higher GDP per capita than every EU nation except Luxembourg. It is also interesting to note that every one of the EFTA States exports more per head to the EU than does Britain.

I am not arguing that Britain should exactly replicate what the EFTA countries have negotiated. On the contrary, I believe that Britain would be able to strike a much more favourable deal than any of these countries, for three reasons.

FIRST: as readers of eurofacts will be well aware, Britain is structurally in deficit with the rest of the EU. In the years since we joined, we have run an average deficit of more than £30 million a day. For most of that period, we have been in surplus with every Continent in the world except Europe. It is not normal, in any transaction, for the salesman to have the upper hand over the Client [unless your name is Edward Heath or those other give- away merchants that didn’t know anything about the above maxim -or want to know.]

SECOND: We are much larger than the EFTA States.

Switzerland has a population of 7.4 million

Norway 4.6 million

Iceland 280,000

Liechtenstein 18,000.

Our greater weight and diplomatic experience should give us a powerful negotiating position [Here again so long as those so-called diplomats who have previously given ALL away without scruple should NOT be involved.]

THIRD: We are an existing member of the EU. We cannot legally be excluded from the existing rules of the Single Market.

We would not be approaching supplicants from the outside, but negotiating terms on which other States would be free to adopt the Constitution without us.

Voting ‘No’ to the [New] Constitution would not simply be a vote for the status quo.

Rather, it would be a vote for better terms, allowing us to repatriate substantial powers from Brussels, while remaining linked to the other States through the constant nexus of the Free Market.

[Font altered-bolding used -comments in brackets]

In order to achieve this, though, we need a Government that will demand it. That is why the really vital vote is not the referendum, but the intervening General Election on 5^th May 2005.

Only one political party can get the right terms for us all -and that is the

UKIP- www.ukip.org

THE ONLY PARTY

WITH A MANDATE

TO LEAVE THE EU.

[The majority of politicians in all the other main parties are ardent Europhiles who are not to be trusted as we are witnessing by the majority in our House of Commons to deprive British citizens of their right to Habeas Corpus-the right to a trial by jury and not to House Arrest without any charge being preferred.]

MARCH/05

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