If work said they were going to pay for my travelcard next year with a £1000 cash bonus, but then took £700 out of my annual wages as a result, I’d certainly feel they had paid for only £300 of my travelcard. If they did the same trick for a voluntary expense, I would be very upset if they then criticised me for only spending £300 on it!

And where does QMV fit into an intergovernmental system?

I wish we did have intergovernmentalism for co-operation in Europe – rather than the relic of 1950s superstate ideology that is today’s EU. A centralising system misguidedly supported by some with otherwise perfectly respectable federalist ideals.

Similarly, the UK is not one among 27 equals in the EU. It is in the troika of biggest member states and can command commensurate power, if it would exercise it with a modicum of tactical nous. We even have a British free-trader as EU Trade Commissioner.

It is very rare for either the EU or the WTO to come to decisions by threat of veto.

You might think unilateral free trade is “intensely desirable” but it also “intensely unrealistic”. The UK had plenty of import tariffs before it joined into the EU, remember. It’s an interesting question, whether the UK is more open in relation to its main trading partners as a member of the EU than it was before joining. I don’t know the answer, but I’d be interested in hearing from anyone who does.

Much as we might bemoan mercantilism, it’s the way the world works right now, and it isn’t likely to change anytime soon. Exporters want the help of their governments in opening foreign markets, and deals can be done.

Having said that, the EU’s ‘everything but arms’ market opening for the world’s poorest developing countries is a notable example of a significant unilateral move to free trade. Not perfect but a step in the right direction. It just happened a major priority of the UK government at the and the then EU trade commissioner, Pascal Lamy.

See also: Britain’s regional development policies.

It really is (as Tim says in response 1) all about having a blue plaque on the front.

Would it make you happier if the flags on the EU project were German, Dutch, Austrian, Belgian, Danish and Swedish – the main contributor countries to the EU budget?

The EU can claim credit for making the policy happen, but you need to get over the delusion of thinking that the EU is some kind of ‘other’ entity

The EU is really an intergovernmental system, even though federalists like Jon would wish to see it otherwise. The Council is made up entirely of member state governments and the Commissioners tend to defend their own national interests more often than was envisaged. After all they’re politicians and they want a place to go home to once their term is over. And as for the Parliament… well MEPs are elected by national constituencies and anway, the Parliament has very few real powers when it comes to expenditure.

And as for free trade, the EU did more to bring free trade to the UK than any other institution – free trade with 475 million of the world’s most wealthy consumers, and the power to negotiate on equal terms with the US, Japan, India and China. Outside the EU, the UK would have all the power at the WTO of….erm… Norway, i.e. not very much.

Quite, my point. Most ( as I did not) do not know that. So when we get that EU flag on some project in Nantwitch, or flood whatever, the EU claims 100% of the credit for the spending, while those seeing the sign don’t understand that 66% is coming from their own pockets.

As I said, lying bastards.

As to 15% of the budget coming from tariffs: well, how are we to ever get free trade if the only directly controllable income stream of a bureaucracy is from tariffs?

So the idea that there’s this great big money tree in Brussels and that every member state’s duty is to shake it as hard as it can on behalf of its citizens is entirely misplaced. Money doesn’t come from ‘the EU’ it comes from EU member states.

The mechanics of the rebate negotiated by a certain Margaret Thatcher means that when additional money is allocated from the 26 member states to the UK, there is a recalculate of the rebate. The net result is that the UK increases it’s contribution to the EU budget by about two thirds of the value of the additional spending.

But this makes sense if the idea of the rebate is to correct for the fact that the UK doesn’t have a very large agricultural economy compared to its size and since the CAP accounts for just under half of all EU spending there is a politically unsustainable imbalance between what the UK puts in and what it gets out.

If there were to be a change in the structure of EU spending policies such that the value of the CAP was reduced, the rebate would be unnecessary.

But we are where we are, the rebate works as it was designed. If the UK is allocated some extra money as a result of a decision made in Brussels, the imbalance that the rebate is meant to correct is reduced, so the rebate should be reduced accordingly.

The Treasury thinks its job is to be mean and it is rarely outed in this way. I hope it’s shamed into complying with the decision made in Brussels (to which the UK was a party, remember) to allocate this money to flood-affected communities.