“Most people understand “single market” to mean something like “free trade zone”. In fact, in the EU context, it means “single regulatory regime”. Membership of the single market doesn’t mean the right to buy and sell there (pretty much the entire world can do that); it means accepting EU jurisdiction over your domestic technical standards… Only six per cent of British companies do any business at all with the rest of the EU; yet 100 per cent of our firms must apply 100 per cent of EU regulations. Our aim should be to exempt the 94 per cent … from EU directives and regulations.”
– Daniel Hannan, quoted in a new paper from the Institute of Economic Affairs, making the case for unilateral free trade. The item is by Kevin Dowd, a noted exponent, among other things, of genuine competition in banking and money, and a scathing critic of our current banking and monetary regime.
Tim Worstall had thoughts on all this some time ago. And a little history: the speech by Sir Robert Peel, one of the greatest British statesmen of all time, on the case for ending agricultural protection.
The new EU General Data Protection Regulation will demonstrate that you can pass the regulations but not everyone is going to follow them. Especially not the American and other countries who they’ve also brought under it.
Tim Worstall also had the wonderful idea that if the EU charged us for access to the single market then it should be be the exporters who should pay.
Quite correct J.P.
The so called “Single Market” is actually the legal power of the European Union to regulate the internal economies (yes I did say internal) of “member” nations.
In 1986 one could understand people being tricked by talk of a “Single Market” into thinking it was about free trade – Mrs Thatcher was deceived and soon found out (to her horror)
when the tidal wave of E.U. regulations started to hit almost every area of British life.
But in 2017 – people still talking about the “Single Market” as if it was about Free Trade?
No one could, in 2017 (not 1986), make such a mistake innocently – damn such liars, damn them to Hell.
“Ah but Paul, Mrs May and Mr Hammond are planning to keep the E.U. regulations – if fact they intend a special Act of Parliament to incorporate all of them into British law”.
Now I must remember – when one cuts one’s wrist one does not do it across, one does it up the arm. I must keep that in mind.
Yes. Great idea.
There are forty years worth of regulations. Some are good, some are pointless, some are bad.
There is no possibility of sorting through that lot in two years.
So it is essential to incorporate the lot for day one. We can them sort through them at our leisure. March 20 will thus be, as Mr. Hannan puts it, an inflection point.
I would recommend the same approach to “EU” grants in the UK- some of the schemes need scrapping, some are ok, maybe some are underfunded- incorporate the lot and then work through amending them at leisure.
Of course it would be a good idea to have some amendments ready to Present to Parliament on March 20 2019.
UK is a single market, Canada is a single market, France is… for example.
What defines a single market is freedom of movement of: goods, services, capital, labour (the four freedoms) and not common regulations.
Evidently a common regulatory and Customs area is needed for a single market, but the EU is not a single market despite its common regulatory and Customs framework because there are still impediments to the four freedoms.
“We can them sort through them at our leisure”
You know this means “never” right? The UK should have committed only to maintain EEA rules, which are only about a quarter of the EU rules.
I disagree with Hannan. The single market is there to overcome technical barriers to trade. Various other nations like Canada and South Korea do trade with single market member but the trade is nowhere near as deep as it is between single market member countries, so the whole ‘traded to the single market but not be in the single market’ spiel is a nonsense.
In the U.S. we have “Fair Trade”, some folks attach the gold seal to their products
so they can claim they’re “smart”, and “World” Political Science/Economically savvy.
Membership, or dues are not mandatory. Occasional use of the phrase “United Nations”, and “empowering women” in passing, is. (whether correctly or not.)
SEE: Dolphin Free! Free range (something), Craft (whatever), Concentrated…, HMO free, Natural.., Organic, Now with micro- (something), ….and a whole range of “association” approvals that imply something like “By appointment to His Majesty, the recently replaced Assistant Executive Secretary to the Director of the Environmental Protection Agency”
Just kidding, that last one is how we get “experts” for chat shows, pretending to be breaking news.
Canada is not yet a single market. Don’t try moving beer or maple syrup across the Quebec border into another province without the proper paperwork having been done. And don’t think you will be able to practice as a nurse without having paid obeisance both morally and materially to the relevant nursing authority. There are also differing provincial standards that apply to some trades all of which restrict the “freedom of movement of: goods, services, capital, labour”.