The EU won't be beastly to us because...

cogito

A_Medium_Size_Jock wrote: »

Why?
The EU moved the goalposts recently, were you not aware?
Voting now means a "qualified majority" is all that is needed.
In fact now an agreement could still go ahead even if countries representing up to 35% of the EU's population voted against.
http://www.consilium.europa.eu/en/council-eu/voting-system/qualified-majority/

It depends on the issue. Areas where member states have a veto include:


There are now only a few areas of EU policy where changes require a unanimous vote. In these few areas member states still effectively have a veto on EU decisions. They are:

• Common Foreign and Security Policy (with the exception of certain clearly defined cases which require qualified majority, e.g. Appointment of a special representative)
• Citizenship – the granting of new rights to EU citizens
• New EU membership
• Harmonisation of national legislation on indirect taxation
• EU finances (own resources, the multiannual financial framework)
• Certain provisions in the field of justice and home affairs (the European prosecutor, family law, operational police cooperation, etc.)
• Harmonisation of national legislation in the field of social security and social protection.

It is safe to assume that the European Commission is working to remove this right if you look carefully at its work programme for 2017.

A_Medium_Size_Jock

cogito wrote: »

It depends on the issue. Areas where member states have a veto include:


There are now only a few areas of EU policy where changes require a unanimous vote. In these few areas member states still effectively have a veto on EU decisions. They are:

• Common Foreign and Security Policy (with the exception of certain clearly defined cases which require qualified majority, e.g. Appointment of a special representative)
• Citizenship – the granting of new rights to EU citizens
• New EU membership
• Harmonisation of national legislation on indirect taxation
• EU finances (own resources, the multiannual financial framework)
• Certain provisions in the field of justice and home affairs (the European prosecutor, family law, operational police cooperation, etc.)
• Harmonisation of national legislation in the field of social security and social protection.

It is safe to assume that the European Commission is working to remove this right if you look carefully at its work programme for 2017.

Quite so - but none of these (it appears) directly apply to the UK invoking Article 50.

Raoul Ruparel of think tank Open Europe told the programme that “once a deal is reached, it has to be approved by a qualified majority” of the remaining EU nations.

https://infacts.org/state-likely-veto-eu-exit-terms/

And indeed it does appear that the EU is working to remove the right to veto throughout, following the Dutch and Belgian fiascos.

Conrad

I too have posted up Article 8 a few times.


I agree with davomcdave above, the UK will need to appear to have had difficulties / punishment to deter others, but none the less a decent trading relationship will be sculpted.


Again I'd be cool with WTO, we'd extract all sorts of benefits that route anyway in terms of global trade and we would trade well with Europe just as a host of other non EU nations do

cogito

A_Medium_Size_Jock wrote: »

And indeed it does appear that the EU is working to remove the right to veto throughout, following the Dutch and Belgian fiascos.

That was really my point. The Remain camp were either being disingenuous or deliberately deceptive when they kept assuring us that our veto meant that we could stop the EU doing anything that was against our interests.

Thrugelmir

The EU quite correctly sticking to their core principles on which the bloc was founded isn't being beastly. Understandable that Mrs May's hard line speech has drawn the responses it has. As it polarises the positions of the parties at the table. On some issues there will be trade offs to arrive at a compromise. On other issues total disagreement. The UK's financial contribution shouldn't be underestimated either. In terms of the imports we make, the net cash we hand over and the net amount even that we spend as tourists.

kabayiri

What happens when the messages and tone coming from the EU politicians is at variance with some of the key EU states?

Do the needs of a strong economic zone like Bavaria win out over the EU posturing on behalf of a handful of smaller EU states?

It seems to me that Germany defined the agenda on refugees, not Juncker or anyone else in the EU.

Just how much sway do the EU politicians have, if they are under pressure?

The_Last_Username

kabayiri wrote: »

What happens when the messages and tone coming from the EU politicians is at variance with some of the key EU states?

Do the needs of a strong economic zone like Bavaria win out over the EU posturing on behalf of a handful of smaller EU states?

It seems to me that Germany defined the agenda on refugees, not Juncker or anyone else in the EU.

Just how much sway do the EU politicians have, if they are under pressure?

Germany (and to a lesser degree France and Italy) have traditionally been the dominant members way back since "Common Market" days with Belgium, Holland etc. as willing co-conspirators if you will, in broad agreement with the major influences.
Agreement was, fairly obviously, much easier with fewer members of the club.

With 27 members (excluding the UK) and with such diverse cultures, needs and beliefs it is surely obvious that agreement is less likely.
So that (using the examples above) Holland could veto agreement over Ukraine and Belgium over CETA.
Hence a change to Qualified Majority with less and less being allowed to be vetoed.

The politicians; well for example Junckers position is similar in many ways to the speaker in the House of Commons and does not vote.
We all know that this is not how the position looks and that he at least attempts to sway opinion.

So, the opinion of whom?
I think that the link in post # 9 explains what you want:

The weighting of votes roughly reflects the size of population of each member state.The 352 votes are distributed as follows:

• France, Germany, Italy, United Kingdom: 29 votes each
• Spain, Poland: 27 votes each
• Romania: 14 votes
• Netherlands: 13 votes
• Belgium, Czech Republic, Greece, Hungary, Portugal: 12 votes each
• Austria, Bulgaria, Sweden: 10 votes each
• Croatia, Denmark, Ireland, Lithuania, Slovakia, Finland: 7 votes each
• Cyprus, Estonia, Latvia, Luxembourg, Slovenia: 4 votes each
• Malta: 3 votes

So, now perhaps you can see how difficult it may be to even reach a 65% majority agreement.

Germany and the refugees; well certainly they defined the agenda on refugees initially in a way but the erection of fences and increased border security by (just for example) Hungary in fact gave Germany (and thus the EU) time to cut a deal with Turkey.
Otherwise Germany may - in fact certainly would - have seen much higher numbers of migrants.

This difficult area is yet another within the EU which has not yet seen a satisfactory conclusion, with Turkey now "grumbling" and more migrants crossing the Med.

Regarding the EU stance on Brexit we have already seen major disagreement on stances from different EU member states politicians; one such very public disagreement was at Davos just yesterday.

If nothing else, watching Brexit unfold will certainly be interesting to observe.

The_Last_Username

cogito wrote: »

That was really my point. The Remain camp were either being disingenuous or deliberately deceptive when they kept assuring us that our veto meant that we could stop the EU doing anything that was against our interests.

Ah yes.
Given what we know so far, would you care to hazard a guess at which one is most likely?

Sapphire

Thrugelmir wrote: »

The EU quite correctly sticking to their core principles on which the bloc was founded isn't being beastly. Understandable that Mrs May's hard line speech has drawn the responses it has. As it polarises the positions of the parties at the table. On some issues there will be trade offs to arrive at a compromise. On other issues total disagreement. The UK's financial contribution shouldn't be underestimated either. In terms of the imports we make, the net cash we hand over and the net amount even that we spend as tourists.

Do you think the EU are still hoping that they can draw it out and we don't leave? I think if that happened it would be totally unacceptable to so much of our population, and make it lose trust completely (especially in the Tory government since it has promised to abide by the vote, though any other party obstructing the democratic vote for Brexit, over which I know so many people agonised before voting, will be finished, I believe). Forcing the UK population to remain in the EU when so many people increasingly (as they've found about more about the whole sovereignty issue) want to leave would be a really, really bad idea.

I'm also concerned that if the 'discussion' period is going to be as much as two years, masses more people will arrive from the Continent, whether from inside or outside the EU, creating even more tension in our country, and damaging it further financially.

This business of 'prolonging talks about deals' beyond the two-year period – would such 'talks' continue after we have left?

I hope they are not trying to pull a fast one, though May certainly didn't sound as though that was the case…

kinger101

Words like "may contain" and "possibility" don't really compel them to do anything. It's just meaningless fluff which everyone could agree on when it was written, precisely because it was meaningless.

I'd like to believe that pragmatism will arrive at a result which is good for continued trade between the UK and EU. At the same time, we need to be aware that it can't be seen to be a better deal than remaining in the EU itself.

Do I have much faith in them being "neigbourly" or pragmatic. None whatsoever. If Scotland had left the UK at the last referendum, they'd have been frozen out the EU for many many years because of some domestic issue Spain has. Pure spite. Brokering any deal with 27 nations (some of whom have regional mechanisms to veto too) is going to be a nightmare. If they weren't such an important trade block, they'd be at the back of the queue.