Europe: Time to leave

Don Atkinson believes that the EU has failed in key areas

I do not believe the advantages gained by being a member of the European Union outweigh its fundamental moral deficiencies and apparently unrepented economic failings. I believe, therefore, that Quakers should support leaving the EU.

In this country, we try to practice ‘liberal democracy’, an imperfect method of government but the best devised to date. It has not escaped other members, including Germany, that the EU is inherently undemocratic.

A 2014 report by the Electoral Reform Society concludes that it would be ‘difficult’ to remove the EU’s democratic deficit without basic constitutional change. The EU’s structure is blamed, rightly or wrongly, for the European Parliament’s failure to achieve democratic legitimacy. Even supporters of the EU have sought ways to reduce its democratic deficit. For more than half a century they have been unsuccessful.

We have little say in the drafting or interpretation of EU laws that may affect our sovereignty. Neither the courts nor the police are under the control of the European Parliament. Nor can the Parliament introduce new laws, only recommend them and modify what already exists. Even those decisions must be approved by the ‘unelected’ Council before they become law that is binding on each member nation.

EU human rights legislation does not, in my view, provide individuals with the right protection for today. Our law does. Whilst we remain members of the EU, we must apply their lesser standards to this vital area of individual freedom and security.

It is not true that the EU is primarily a vehicle of peace. The reasons why there has been no major war in Europe since 1945 are the subject of some debate. I doubt most Quakers believe peace has been maintained by the threat of terminal military action.

Not enough young people in the EU can find work. Obsessed with format rather than enterprise, its members’ status rather than the future, the EU offers its members inadequate economic security. It also does little to redress inequality. How can unemployment for young people that ranges between 7.2 per cent and 49.8 per cent across EU countries offer equality? And how does such a restrictive organisation hope to raise itself out of low growth?

‘Project Fear’ should be named ‘Project Laziness’. It is harder to trade successfully outside the EU. It is also more profitable. It offers us a future. We are historically a global trading nation, which, by definition, benefits more of the world’s poor long-term. Currently, forty-four per cent of our exports go to the EU. It looks a lot but is a declining percentage. Alone, that figure seems reason enough to avoid any special relationship with the EU. Yet we are a net contributor to it.

Quakers embrace diversity. It is obvious that we are all different. Nor is it rocket science to realise that trying to make one size fit every nation won’t work, culturally or politically. Above all, financially. Yet the EU persists with this idea, which already harms not only individual members but the EU as a whole.

I would wish to stay in the EU were it succeeding in becoming more democratic and were it based on sound economic common sense. However, today, I believe, it remains undemocratic, a politically-based bureaucracy, inward-looking, restrictive, offering little or no growth to its members, ineffective in promoting equality, careless of its future, the young and unhelpful long-term towards poorer peoples. It insists that ‘one size fits all’, when it clearly does not.

The EU is based upon a non sequitur. It is a sinking ship. It is time to leave.

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