Well I was going to post a reply to Carl’s blog post last week, “Two Views on the EU”, but I figured, since I haven’t blogged in so long, I’d step up the beat of the response a bit and make it a blog of my own.

Naturally, I’m going to play devils advocate here and take an opposite slant on the issue – I think generally despite the title, the article was pro-Europe and while I once was pro-EU myself, I think I’ve come to a place of being EU-neutral, maybe even a little against in it’s current form, but before I get all feverous on the subject I’ll say clearly I’m not as anti-EU as I might suggest here – in my WoW days I even lived in ‘EU time’ since I played on EU servers with people from all over Europe, my days were an hour offset to my British friends clocks, and I’ve even dated a Spaniard (who was very very very pro-EU).  See – I like the EU in some respects.  It’d be more accurate to say I sympathise with this view point, but I’m putting it forward because if you’re going to call your post “Two views…” the second view should get a plug (ziiing :-P).

I’d like to start by suggesting not all anti-EU voices can be summarised as a selfish view.  Or it can only to a lesser extent that you might call all pro-EU views the “Naive View”, since I often find pro-EU people guilty of incredible idealism.  That said, I’ll concede a common criticism against the EU is the cost, but euro-sceptics don’t believe for one minute if we pulled out of the EU our tax would reduce and that money would end up in their own pockets – they’re only as selfish as ‘wanting the money spent on our grandparents or the education of the little ones’, which is hardly as evil a desire as the pet name ‘selfish’ makes you feel about it.  You might have meant these view make us a selfish collective as a nation but a reader is likely to, on some level, link selfish with the singular euro-sceptic from this word choice and intended or not, that’s not really fair.

That behind us, let’s get down to cold turkey.  To put some real numbers to it, the UK spent €6,689,900,000 on net EU contributions in 2007.  That’s after you’ve taken out what we get back in the British rebate and for subsidies that have come back from the pot of cash in Brussels. 
6.6 Thousand Million euro’s (or 6 billion if you’re American).  A little side point here – it’s a shame that the unit ‘billion’ when referring to British matters is all but useless on the net, since it’s sometimes hard to tell if the author uses billion in the US (and what is slowly becoming the norm in the UK) sense, “1,000,000,000”, and sometimes uses it in the traditional British sense, “1,000,000,000,000”, but nay mind. 

Where were we?  Ah yes, €6,689,900,000.  Now I could rattle of some rather capitalising numbers on just how many schools, hospitals, teachers, nurses, trains, buses, armour plates for our military choppers, or any other investment you might consider a good thing that this money could otherwise be spent on.  This amount remember is not the total we’ve put in over the years – it’s just 2007’s figure – and if trends have held were probably putting in more like 10,000,000,000EU by now.  We could even pay off some of our national debt, create much better pensions and care homes for the elderly, or underwrite a bank or two if we really must.  But I’ll be honest here and point out that €10,000,000,000 isn’t as massive an amount as it sounds.  If we split it on the UK’s pensioners for example, it comes down to each of them having just less than £100/month extra in their pension.  Of course £100 to an individuals monthly income isn’t nothing, especially to someone on a dismal UK state pension, and, we wouldn't actually split it down amongst them all equally or in fact, split most of it at all – instead it could be far more effectively spent on services and infrastructure that could serve larger groups of pensioners in more economical uses of the money.  So it’s enough money to meet the needs of our parents and grandparent who’ve worked hard all their lives and deserve some dignity and comfort in their retirement, but keeping it in perspective, let’s point out that’s all it could do.  We couldn’t invest in the NHS and pensions and police and communities and the military and yadda yadda yadda… It’s enough to make a noticeable difference on one national issue, not to cure all our ills, but still – it’s not something to throw away.

Of course it’s easier for people who don’t need that money, or who receive sufficient amounts of state money already to call any euro-sceptic foolish for wanting this money to be spent on our grandparents or children, but that seems a bit unfair.  It gets even more unfair when you look at how the Euro-contributions/payouts are decided.  It’s based on several measurements, but one is GDP, and another is money spent on collected through various taxes.  Of course, some nations have higher tax rates than others, and though some have higher GDP’s others have higher public spending and lower GDP’s.  Spain’s a good example, since it’s a net recipient of EU money to the tune of €52,000,000+/year, it has a massive amount of state provided jobs, all it’s pensions are safely provided for, and a the public enjoy subsidized and free national services and products so they don’t need as big a GDI to maintain a comfortable standard of living.  Sure we have an NHS too, and you can argue whether EU net recipients NHS’s are better or worse than ours on the whole, but to have ours we build up substantial national debt, so the truth is, we can’t really afford all out subsidies, and even with them, how expensive is public transport compared to its’ counterparts in Spain?  Should a net recipient of the EU not really have a higher degree of national debt that the net contributors?  Or lower public subsidies?  Not as an enforced rule, just… shouldn’t that kind of effect logically follow?  But it doesn’t.  And that’s a good indication this view of ‘rich’ and ‘poor’ nations of the EU isn’t all that brilliantly thought out.  If the UK is first allowed to deal with it’s own expenditure to create a standard of living for it’s citizens that is equal to their continental brothers and sisters, without adding to our national debt, and then whatever a nation has in above that is what we apply the contribution formula to…. that would seem fairer to me.  And just more responsible from a fiscal investment point of view – if it’s not clear to you by now – WE DON’T HAVE THIS MONEY WE’RE SPENDING, and that’s going to be a world of pain for everyone in the world if we don’t start being more realistic with our budget.

So even if it were selfish, it’s not money we have, and it’s not yours to give away anyway.

And now the idealism.  Oh the idealism.  I can understand people buying into the dream.  I do, as a matter of fact, want the EU to work.  In fact it may have to if we’re to compete in world trade against the US and the BRIC’s (Brazil, Russia, India, and China) when it comes to manufacture and trade.  More over, there’s a stability aspect, political and social homogenisation aimed at reducing potential conflict, especially violent conflict both between member states as well as between a member and non-members.  There is an aim to teach each other, and help one another keep in perspective – to hear each others voices so we can provide a friends advise that can save your country from blindly walking into avoidable fights.  Our social sharing is designed to increase diversity in societies to reduce domestic persecution and discord.  And by supporting poorer nations on the eastern side of the EU into industrial development, we’re encouraging all of this, and building them into ‘our team’ so that when they’re strong industrial forces like us they’ll look out for us while we look out for them and ohh wont we all just join hands and skip round the campfire singing ‘Imagine’.  I don’t think you will find anyone who doesn’t wish all of that would happen.  I don’t think any euro-sceptic argues that peace and security are things we don’t want.  And I know that’s what the pro-EU view sells you on.  But it’s not what the EU will provide.  Not in reality.  Accept that first, and you’ll realise it’s not the euro-sceptics you have to work on – it’s the EU itself. 

Make that into the thing it claims to be, and the sceptics will become supporters – but it’s not that they don’t understand or agree with the aims – it’s that they realise they’re not going to get any of it.  As soon as nations who can make good use of the investments have got their economies in a good state of growth – they’ll very happily sign an agreement with India or China instead and leave the EU trade agreements cold, and don’t think for a minute they wont.  I don’t think I even have to will to go into the lessons history has taught us about how ‘artificially advancing’ another nations social thinking never works, and that’s before you go into whether it’s even right to do so anyway – but the social homogenisation is lip service, because the institutions that should enforce their agreed changes are the ones who care least for the change, and so crimes of discrimination simply become unacknowledged other than the odd showcase of change.  It’s not actually happening, and the investment of cash will just be taken without creating this security blanket we’re so happily forking out for.  The dream isn’t shared where it most critically needs to be in order to make it work, and short of interfering with democratic domestic process, you can’t do anything about that with the EU.

Fix the money, make a system that can deliver the dream, and I’m on board.  Give me the pamphlet on “What we hope to achieve some day in our dream world” and hand fistfuls of our cash of the money we’re borrowing to stay in the game over to nations who need it no more than we do ourselves, and I’m afraid I can’t respect your intentions, no mater how noble I believe them to be.

Alright – I’ll wrap up now.  All this political dissidence can exhaust a man.  Hopefully there’s been some points of worth for your careful consideration.