Rightly or wrongly, the Liberal Democrats are as seen as the most pro-European of the three main political parties. The UK debate on the European Union is often framed in terms of “Europhiles v Eurosceptics”. However, it’s my experience, after 2 and a half years as the European Commission’s head of media in the UK, that most people don’t really have much of an opinion either way. They care about things that affect them personally, and probably don’t see the EU very present in their daily lives. European debates, either in the UK or at EU level, have a tendency to be about process rather than content, which is really only interesting to Euronerds. So when you’re on the doorstep, being asked what the UK gets out of its membership of the European Union, how do you know what to say?
This is a question that we at the European Commission’s UK office have grappled with for a while, and is why we developed the website www.theEUandme.org.uk. This gives some practical examples of what the average Brit gets out of the EU, from booze cruises to pet passports. It also deconstructs some of the most persistent Euromyths, such as the EU forcing the UK to go metric. You can use the site to check out the water quality of the beach next to your holiday hotel, or find out how much you will be charged for using your mobile abroad.
Not all the EU issues that come up in the media are on www.theEUandme.org.uk, so if you want to keep an eye on EU coverage, our “In the Press” site regularly carries letters to editors and brief rebuttals of inaccurate press coverage. One of them was even featured on LibDem Voice!
We’re also very active on Twitter and Facebook so are always ready to help you answer any questions about the EU you might get.
Antonia Mochan is Head of Media, Representation of the European Commission in the UK.
‘The Independent View‘ is a slot on Lib Dem Voice which allows those from beyond the party to contribute to debates we believe are of interest to LDV’s readers. Please email [email protected] if you are interested in contributing.
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11 Comments
The EU are too inflexible, e-books and virtual worlds with their own economies attract VAT, the former makes a mockery of the UK’s VAT free status on books and the latter makes Europeans uncompetitive when they try and run a business via a virtual world because those who don’t have to pay VAT have a massive advantage, but the EU is a horribly slow and inflexible organisation.
Great post Antonia, thanks. It’s so hard sometimes to find solid facts about how the EU is helping different parts of Britain… the anti-EU media are too often content to dish out lies or half-truths without first checking their voracity, and the pro-EU media just stay quiet.
And thank goodness the Lib Dems are in government, able to restrain the anti-EU tendencies of the Conservatives… another plus point about the Coalition.
How does the centralising and standardising tendency of the EU work alongside our party’s commitment to localism?
Why are those decisions taken at EU level appropriate and necessary?
How can a citizen of the UK vote to replace a corrupt representative from a different country; and if this isn’t possible, how do you defend the EU from accusations of democratic deficit?
@Anthony Interesting point, I will ask our VAT people why that is. What goes on the list of items covered by VAT is an issue of unanimity though, which makes it difficult to change to keep up with technological development, and also makes people reluctant to do so. I agree that the EU is slow, but that’s the price of having an inclusive process. Contrary to what some may think, it isn’t a monolithic structure churning out laws in isolation. They take time to make because there so many institutions involved in the process, which in turn provides checks and balances.
@Andrew A central tenet of the EU is the principle of subsidiarity, which is that decisions should be made at the most appropriate level. The Committee of the Regions, an EU institution that represents regions in the decision-making process, has set up a subsidiarity monitoring network that you might find interesting http://portal.cor.europa.eu/subsidiarity/pages/welcome.aspx
@Stuart thanks for the feedback and I hope you find it useful.
@Antonia, it’s because e-books and virtual worlds all come under the electronic services umbrella, for which VAT is charged, the reasons for that legislation were fine in 2003, European businesses found themselves disadvantaged because even with lower wholesale costs their end user costs were higher than those of a business outside of Europe.
However that was seven years ago and things have changed, within a virtual world the legislation creates the exact situation it was designed to eliminate.
The UK should leave the EU, the CAP and the CFP as soon as possible.
Booze Cruises and Pet Passports – Big Deal!
What about the fortunes paid each year to large landowners (e.g. £300,000 p.a. to the Duke of Westminster and £500,000 p.a. to the Prince of Wales) by the Common Agricultural Policy for the privilege of owning vast tracts of land they have inherited tax free?
What about the million tons of fish thrown back in the North Sea because of the Common Fisheries Policy?
Madness! Let us rule ourselves instead of being ruled by a corrupt bureaucracy in Brussels.
Well, I don’t. Euroreformist, not Eurosceptic. We need to fix that stuff, and we can’t do that by quitting.
Andrew Suffield,
Better to quit, become some kind of Associate Member and welcome Turkey on similar Associated terms so that that secular Asian state is not excluded from European cooperation.
Thanks for taking the time to post on LDV.
To construe the public opposition/disquiet about the EU as an information problem – one of getting people more aware of what we get out of it vs. what we put in is sadly mistaken. If it persists in official EU circles, then I am very much afraid nothing can save the EU in the long term which would be a tragedy. I strongly believe in the concept of all European nations pooling appropriate bits of their sovereignty but that’s not what the EU provides.
Any organisation (company, state, etc.) big enough to have more than one level of management needs to think long and hard about how it manages the boundaries – both geographical and functional – that this creates. The EU does not do this although it pretends to, sort of.
In western Europe we have become accustomed to having settled geographical boundaries but in the East and Balkans this is not so as we have seen following the collapse of the Soviet Empire. The Balkan mess blew up immediately after the Maastricht Treaty – supposed inter alia to give the EU a stronger voice in foreign affairs – was signed, yet the EU had to ask for the Americans to come in and sort it out.
As for functional boundaries, this also became an issue during the Maastricht debate when the Conservative ‘bastards’ were giving John Major a hard time. Immediately, the subsidiarity ointment was deployed and it was claimed to be fundamental to the Treaty. I read it and it wasn’t, not even close. Actually I couldn’t discern that there was any consistent concept how boundaries might be managed. Given that we did not start, like the young USA, with an essentially common culture and technical standards this is a crucial failing bound to inflame sensitivities.
The result is an disproportionately expensive overhead for European nations which habitually covers up its design flaws by resorting to anti-democratic measures (e.g. to Ireland and Denmark – vote again if you get it “wrong” the first time), is actually bossed around by larger countries and (for the Eurozone) has a currency based on fantasy economics and wishful thinking. Nor is it institutionally capable of addressing such shocking system failures as the fisheries policy, the CAP or the snout-in-trough approach of its central administration.
By the way, while it is undoubtedly true, as you say, that the Lib Dems are generally seen as the most pro-EU of the three main parties, the comments in this thread and previous posts on the EU suggest that that is mainly because party HQ is completely out of touch with the membership and/or is at a loss for what else to say. Don’t hold your breath for a riposte from some policy staffer.
“Liberal Eye”
I hope you are right about the leadership being out of touch with the broader party membership on the EU. However, please do not take my comments as an example of an EU-sceptic Liberal Democrat. I am an EU-sceptic Liberal. See http://www.liberal.org.uk. The reason that I am no longer a Liberal Democrat is mainly because of the party’s EU-fanatic enthusiasm. I would gladly consider rejoining the LibDems if they started to reflect the national EU-sceptic protest mood and called for withdrawal from the EU.
Personally, I was in favour of the EEC in the 1975 referendum, but later felt I had been deceived by Ted Heath saying that there would be no loss of sovereignty. When the Iron Curtain fell in 1989, I decided that, in a global world, the EU was the solution to the problems of the past. I thought that it was time for the UK to leave the EU. Locally, in the Henley Constituency, at least, this was treated as a kind of heresy within the Liberal Democrats, so I left them. They were, of course, formed by a merger between the old Liberal Party and a collection of EU-fanatics from the right wing of the Labour Party known as the Social Democratic Party, with which I have to admit dual membershipat the time while still being Chairman of the Oxfordshire LIberals, because I was initially in favour of the merger without realising how EU-fanatic and inegalitarian they were .
The Liberal Democrats are not only too EU-fanatic for me but also less egalitarian than the continuation EU-sceptic Liberal Party. I was very pleased when the Liberal Party adopted UK Universal Inheritance as party policy in 2005. See http://www.universal-inheritance.org . I understand that the EU would not allow this policy of UK Universal Inheritance of £10,000 for all UK-born UK citizens at 25, financed by a radical reform of Inheritance Tax because it would discriminate against other EU nationals. This EU-fanatic approach is well illustrated by the call for EU-wide “Bambini Bonds” to replace the UK’s former Baby Bonds.
Societal empathy is better expressed in the first place within progressive nation states and by progressive nation states towards less fortunate nation states, than within a Europe wide collection of disparate nation states in a bureaucratic and corrupt would-be state called Europe.
Thanks for all the comments, I will certainly pass these on as a flavour of the debate here.