It's an observation on how the EU pushes its own agenda, and lock countries into that agenda with promises of how great it is.

But if it were that great, why make it deliberately painful for countries to leave?

i dont know what you wanted done differently, but the lisbon treaty wasnt some invention by the eu bureaucrats of your imagination. it was negotiated by country leaders.

Please lay out how it is deliberately painful.

You know those fundamental 4 freedoms on which the EU won't compromise.


Well...

'EU officials to discuss ‘free movement’ at Bratislava summit'

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016...-summit-in-bi/

i mean a two year window is tough on those leaving. it would be better for them if they could just hang around and take part in every decision until they felt ready to go*, but the eu has to move on too. the countries still in have stuff to work on too.

That's not deliberately making it harder, those four freedoms are simply what defines the single market. It's at the very core of it, so you either join it and accept all four, or you don't join (or leave) but then your deal won't be close to being part of the internal market.

What's wrong with those freedoms anyway? Freedom of movement of goods, capital, services and labor. Sounds like a lot of economic freedom to me.

So again: what does the EU do to make it deliberately painful to leave?

So you think it's not deliberately designed to not make it easy and painless for a country to leave, do you?

lol

It's not deliberately painful as in: there was a choice to make it harder for countries to leave than necessary.

But of course it can be painful to unwind something like the membership of the single market, but that is because it is such a sweet deal. Not because in its design it was an aim to make it very painful to leave.

But you are still not making YOUR case for how it has been made deliberately painful. Please do so, I'm still waiting.

well, Article 50 gives the EU massive negotiating leverage over the leaving country. It was designed to be deliberately punitive. If you can't agree on that, then this discussion is pointless.

In addition, EU officials seems to be gleeful in exacting pain on the leaving country, so as to, how did Junker put it, 'to keep the rest in line'...something like that, wasn't it?

Why would a successful trading bloc feel the need to keep nations in line if it was working properly?

UK could always leave without triggering article 50.

fwiw no-one serious seems to be considering that as a better way out.

How can I agree on something that you refuse to spell out? You are just making a claim and it remains empty if you can't find arguments to substantiate it.

And there is no need to keep anyone in line, I disagree with Juncker there, and agree with Merkel's position.

All this debate about the EU seems pointless, tbh, the fundamental flaw of creating monetary union as a sneaking in to create political union, and failing to do that quickly, will be the end of the EU. It seems stunningly obvious to me. I could be wrong though.

Also, the fact that it is painful to exit a completely voluntarily entered trading bloc is a sign that it is actually very successful.

This word 'successful'. I don't think it means what you think it means.

Ask a Greek. Or an Italian. Or maybe a Frenchman in a year's time.

The problems they are facing have to do with the Eurozone, not with the single market. We were talking about the single market and you still havent made your argument.

One example would be that supposedly we're not allowed to start negotiating with other countries until we have left - though fortunately it seems like that's just being ignored.

Exactly. It's like having a job contract forever, where if you ever leave you can't start looking for a new job until last day of work is over. I'd call that punitive.

Except someone else other than you came up with one example and no one from the alleged evil empire seems to give a single faq about it anyway.

lol DB.

I wouldn't agree that we are at a disadvantage when we are operating a huge trade deficit with the EU. If they don't want us to spend billions on their goods and services and they are happy losing 000's of jobs in their own countries to score political points then so be it.

Politicians may be happy with this but the workers, the little peasants to the EU politicians, who lose their jobs as a direct result will be up in arms.

I'd expect to see real unrest in Germany and France if the EU politicians actually set out to agree trade terms which cause huge damage to their own economies.

On the other hand this would surely speed up the disintegration of the EU project and return sanity to the world so maybe a couple of years of pain would be worth it to get rid of these idiots.

the brexit side now betting on economic self-interest beating out pure jingoism in the eu countries is pretty funny.

Richdog still making the level 0 mistake of thinking even if Britain gets a bad deal with EU it will somehow stop buying products from the EU.

The whole EU does not want to lose £ and Jobs is a total canard.

Try googling ecomonimcs 101, supply and demand

No one said it might not buy less, but its presented as a binary on/off countless times by leavers and this is of course utterly ridiculous.

What ever reduction happens is very unlikely to represent the "huge damage" RD is claiming.

He also repeats the mistake (leavers keep repeating) of forgetting that what ever damage happens to EU economies is aggregated over several economies who can all get a slice of pain pie that they can deal with, in the UK we have to eat all of our pain pie ourselves.

the largest portion of eu-side pain pie will have to be consumed by the germans aka the people who make all the decisions tho. domestic german political considerations can & will be cynically exploited by our lads i think

Think sometimes largest exporting economy in the world can suck up what ever % of sales to UK is lost via a price increase in exports to UK, with much of said price increase just being sucked up by UK consumers for all sorts of reasons, than the UK economy can deal with the loss of pass porting for the financial sector.

People look at exports, but the passporting for the financial sector is a much bigger issue for the UK.