That would seriously undermine the existence of the EU as a whole. Bear in mind, it justifies the very steep membership fees (for the countries that have high enough GDP to pay) by tying membership to free trade. The EU keeps quite high external tariffs on a lot of things, especially in order to protect French agriculture. Thus the primary argument Remainers presented for staying in the EU was that if Britain left the EU would levy new trade barriers and tariffs on its exports.
The EU has many members who are in it primarily for the transactional benefits. If the EU eliminated external tariffs not only would the French be out on the streets again immediately, but one of the primary motivations for membership would evaporate and the EU would lose a lot of leverage over member states.
The EU is a lot broader than just a tariff agreement; even just the "four freedoms" of the EU are goods, capital, labour, and services, and keeping with the Brexit theme, the trade barriers that Remain was talking about also included "no you can't just do your trade across the border now, we no longer recognise your qualifications" and "we need to inspect the goods crossing this border to make sure they're complying with our legal requirements; yes, we know you didn't change your own, but now there's nothing stopping you from having imported something from somewhere else that didn't follow our rules, and we need to check".
(Also, I said "lower" not "eliminate"; I was thinking more of Chinese PV, and perhaps cars, though cars would have a different group protesting).
Yes, there are lots of trade barriers beyond tariffs, nonetheless the EU does impose plenty of them. See my other reply. And if your goal is to simply have closer trading relations then tariffs vs other kinds of regulatory barriers isn't an important difference. This is why Trump talks about things like VAT, and others in his camp talk about the fines levied on tech companies. From their perspective it's all financially equivalent to tariffs.
Regulatory barriers are the foundational reason the EU parliament exists — to remove those barriers between member states and make sure all member states are on the same page when change needs to happen.
One of the big talking points from the Leave campaign was about sovereignty: that's the ability to make the rules in your own jurisdiction. I never bought those arguments in part because the UK got basically everything it asked for, but also because Brexit combined (1) losing the power to influence those rules going forward, (2) still being de-facto subject them thanks to the Brussels effect, and (3) having a trade barrier with the EU despite #2, because the EU couldn't afford to just trust the UK on the matter.
Every small business that stopped trading with the EU post-Brexit due to customs forms being too complex even when they and their customers would have been fine with the actual cost of the tariffs themselves, is a non-financial barrier.
> This is why Trump talks about things like VAT, and others in his camp talk about the fines levied on tech companies. From their perspective it's all financially equivalent to tariffs.
Does any inter-state trade within the US have tariffs due to different states having their own sales-tax rates? Because to me, the US talk about VAT is that kind of foolishness.
Similar for fines for non-compliance with laws — what's the difference between two US states having different laws and one state suing a business for non-compliance, vs. the EU and US having different laws and an EU member state suing a business for non-compliance?
In fact, if the regulatory barriers between the EU and US were levelled out, then the result would be somewhere on a line between "every Big Tech firm could be sued in a US court for GDPR violations" or "GDPR doesn't exist any more". I'm sure there's plenty of people in the US who would love to delete all the cookie popups and are eager to spy on everyone, but it really isn't just about pure monetary cost.
Actually, now I think about it, cars and eggs: for cars, UK (and IIRC EU) law doesn't permit Cybertruck on the roads — if you tried to model that as a tariff, it would be ∞; likewise for eggs, US controls the salmonella risk of eggs by requiring cleaning which in turn damages the shells meaning they must be refrigerated in the supermarkets, while EU eggs handle it with vaccination of the hens and regard refrigeration before sale as a potential risk factor due to causing damage to the shells.
> Bear in mind, it justifies the very steep membership fees (for the countries that have high enough GDP to pay) by tying membership to free trade. The EU keeps quite high external tariffs on a lot of things, especially in order to protect French agriculture
The EU justifies the high membership fees for the rich members by the benefits those rich members get - the poorer EU countries get invested in, get developed, some of their people go live in the richer countries and contribute there, but in the end, the country evolves a lot and becomes a significant market for EU goods and contributor. Point in case, Poland, the Baltics, Spain, Romania. France has benefited from Romanian development a lot, and from Romanians when Romania was less developed. It's literally a win win win win.
I don't think you can say the benefits the rich members get are their fees being sent to poor members. That's not a benefit to the people who live in the rich countries, that's a price levied on membership. Which is why the last time the EU was seriously debated at a national level (Brexit) nobody attempted to defend the membership fees as anything other than a purely transactional arrangement. You certainly can't claim that immigration is a membership benefit because a country can set its visa policy to attract however many migrants it wants if it's outside the EU, but not if it's inside.
I'm not sure what relevance your link has to what I said, by the way. The Mercosur agreement only happened because the EU was able to keep agricultural tariffs in place:
> For sensitive products like beef, poultry or sugar, in particular, access to the EU market will be permanently limited through gradually implemented quotas. The EU will grant very limited access to its market to imports of agri-food products.
Moreover, a bilateral safeguard clause can be applied in case increased imports from Mercosur cause - or even only threaten to cause - serious injury to the relevant EU sectors.
For the first time, this safeguard clause also covers imports under tariff rate quotas.
The agreement does not give duty-free access to Mercosur beef. It will allow 99,000 tonnes of Mercosur beef to enter the EU market with a 7.5% duty. 55% of the quota will consist of fresh or chilled meat and 45% of lower-value frozen meat.
> I don't think you can say the benefits the rich members get are their fees being sent to poor members. That's not a benefit to the people who live in the rich countries, that's a price levied on membership. Which is why the last time the EU was seriously debated at a national level (Brexit) nobody attempted to defend the membership fees as anything other than a purely transactional arrangement. You certainly can't claim that immigration is a membership benefit because a country can set its visa policy to attract however many migrants it wants if it's outside the EU, but not if it's inside.
The way you phrase this suggests you're considering it from the wrong perspective. What you're arguing against doesn't even seem to be present in my reading of the comment you're replying to.
The membership benefit isn't the fees, any more than your Amazon Prime (etc.) membership's benefit is the fee.
The benefit of the fee to rich countries (i.e. net spenders) is that these other countries, the ones that you're sending money to, are going to align their laws with yours, have a cheap workforce willing to to supply you with labour at a lower cost than your own citizens would otherwise, and that they are now a stable destination for any investment opportunities with your own capital precisely because they're getting integrated with your own economy and law.
Specifically this:
> nobody attempted to defend the membership fees as anything other than a purely transactional arrangement.
We did. You may not have heard it, but we did.
> You certainly can't claim that immigration is a membership benefit because a country can set its visa policy to attract however many migrants it wants if it's outside the EU, but not if it's inside.
Incorrect. Closest you get is that there's a scheme called the "Blue Card" (modelled after the US green card), that applies to everyone except Ireland and Denmark (and before Brexit, the UK): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_Card_(European_Union)
But each member state gets to set quotas on how many Blue Cards they accept, and can also open up rules for other routes into their countries.
> The EU justifies the high membership fees for the rich members by the benefits those rich members get - the poorer EU countries get invested in
Which is just another way of saying "the benefit of paying the fees is that someone else gets them". That's not a benefit and membership fees aren't investments (you don't own anything as a result of paying them).
Same for the rest of this thread. Other countries can align their laws without being given money, and should if those laws are better than their own. It's not a "benefit" to be paying them to fix their own legal systems. Cheap immigrant labour isn't a benefit to the workers in the country, minimum wage laws still apply anyway so the benefits even to rich people are limited, and you don't have to pay foreign countries to attract immigrants from them. They come regardless of what money their government is receiving. In fact big transfer payments make it less likely that they will want to migrate, not more. Finally, countries generally try to be stable locations for investment regardless of EU membership or receiving transfer payments.
> We did. You may not have heard it, but we did.
I don't think anyone did. If they did, then this thread doesn't reflect well on what they must have been saying because not a single argument in it for why fees are a "benefit" make any sense. It's common sense that fees are never a benefit, which is why free trade zones don't normally charge for membership. In fact AFAIK only the EU does that and that's because it's primarily an ideological project that needs huge sums of money for its other goals: free trade is just a carrot-cum-stick used to get countries to go along with it.
> Incorrect. Closest you get is that there's a scheme called the "Blue Card"
The Blue Card is an EU-level scheme with rules set by the Commission, and it only applies to people with "higher professional qualifications" and whose salary is higher than average. Obviously, nobody needs to pay billions in membership fees for the privilege of having random visa scheme imposed on them, any country that wants to can set up such a scheme itself. It's even named after a non-EU document. There is no immigration benefit to being an EU member. If you want to attract lots of migrants from poor EU countries, you can do that easily outside as well.
> Other countries can align their laws without being given money, and should if those laws are better than their own.
"Better" presumes something which does not always exist. Sometimes "aligned" is itself the improvement — but aligned to whom? Why should, e.g. Bulgaria pick alignment with Parisian interests over alignment with Moscow's?
But also, mere alignment is not sufficient: note that customs checks were introduced immediately after Brexit, because the requirement isn't simply to be aligned, but to have the force of international agreement over maintaining that alignment.
> It's not a "benefit" to be paying them to fix their own legal systems.
Compare and contrast with where this hasn't happened — there's a huge growth opportunity in many African nations since well before the end of the colonial era, so much of that potential is held back precisely because the legal systems there aren't able to prevent corruption. Making the investment in the legal system would make it possible to invest in the nations there, which would benefit both those nations (by having lots of money pouring in that doesn't immediately turn into a corrupt official's holiday home) and also the investors (who get a return on that investment).
> Cheap immigrant labour isn't a benefit to the workers in the country,
> minimum wage laws still apply anyway so the benefits even to rich people are limited,
That benefits both sides of the equation: the workers from the poorer country get a boost, you get more people willing to work at (or near) that level.
> and you don't have to pay foreign countries to attract immigrants from them. They come regardless of what money their government is receiving.
Only when their qualifications are going to be recognised, when their health insurance options are valid, etc. — it isn't enough to just know how to be an electrician, you also need the local insurance company to sell you public liability insurance.
> In fact big transfer payments make it less likely that they will want to migrate, not more.
Only once the investments have actually converted into a real boost to the economy, thus paying for themselves.
> Finally, countries generally try to be stable locations for investment regardless of EU membership or receiving transfer payments.
The EU is a mechanism for doing that; that it isn't the only mechanism is irrelevant.
> not a single argument in it for why fees are a "benefit" make any sense
You're misreading this, I think. Fees pay for the benefits, they're not the benefits themselves.
They one of the things that makes EU a place of growth. It's like all the discussions about USAID, except on your doorstep. Or, for that matter, any investment scheme your own government pays for out of taxes which are spent entirely within your own country, like highways — I benefit from the existence of a highway network, despite having only owned a car for a week total and that nearly a decade ago, this is like that.
> Please re-read what I wrote, as this answer doesn't seem to make sense in context.
Could say the same to you, on this, given you've ignored that:
(1) The Blue Card scheme is not used by all EU nations
(2) Each nation can set its own quotas for how many are issued — "As of August 2020, European countries vary wildly in the number of issued Blue Cards. Cyprus, Greece and Netherlands have not yet issued any cards," from my link
(3) Each nation has its own additional visa scheme entirely separate from this
(4) The Blue Card scheme was not "imposed", it was a voluntary streamlining (see #1)
Your previous comment claimed, falsely:
> a country can set its visa policy to attract however many migrants it wants if it's outside the EU, but not if it's inside.
I took the bit about re-reading out of my post as it was unnecessarily snarky. Still, we're clearly not seeing eye to eye here at all. Every "benefit" of the fees posited in this thread a country can have for free, other than the EU dropping tariffs.
If a non-EU government wants to give foreign aid to Poland, it can.
If it wants to invest in Romania (normal definition of invest), it can.
If it wants to enable mass immigration of min-wage workers, it can. (and the UK government is doing so right now).
If it wants to align its laws with those of the EU, it can.
Not a single benefit in this thread is actually a benefit. EU membership fees are mandatory foreign aid European countries are expected to pay as a price of not being tariffed, and that's an artificial "benefit" that nobody else in the world charges for and that the EU also doesn't charge non-European countries for.
I'm not going to get into an argument about who benefits from cheap labour, it's a different debate and well worn. On your other points:
• The EU isn't a place of growth. Last year it managed GDP growth of 1%, the year before it was 0.4%. The US managed near 3% each time. It's scary that people living inside it aren't aware of this. EU growth should be higher than the US given that it contains countries still catching up from the communist era.
• Blue Card is mandatory under EU law. It's "not used" by a few countries because it was forced on them with the loophole of there being no minimum issuance quotas, not because it's a voluntary scheme they didn't choose to sign up for.
But once again, we seem to be talking at opposites here. What claim are you responding to with this Blue Card stuff? Is it the "not if it's inside" bit? Because to repeat, Blue Card doesn't let you attract as many migrants as you want if you're inside the EU - it has a legal requirement for higher-than-average salaries - and obviously it's not a benefit of paying membership fees, which is where this thread started.
I have read the whole conversation and he just lives in an alternate reality.
The EU has little benefits for the citizens of rich countries, expect for the dominant class, political and business, because they got more power in various different ways.
Outside of that, it is a net loss for your average person and in fact the current events show very well the lie of its usefulness.
Allegedly the EU is good because it gives its citizens a power comparable to the other big/rich countries like the US or China. But in fact, it is very weak on almost all fronts because it just built a dystopian bureaucratic system that only favored bureaucrat creation at the expense of everything else.
It has terrible defense/army, terrible industry, terrible commercial balance in general, terrible innovation (the main reason of no tech stuff there) and more I can't think about right now...
The only thing it has done "successfully" is legislate the shit out of everything, at great cost for everyone. And it didn't even allow to meet the idealistic goals (like the greenwashing and Germany's moronic "leadership" on that).
The trade war ongoing highlight the inadequacy of the EU and the reality is that their arsenal for retaliation is rather thin, without hurting their own population that is.
If you think the EU doesn't work, you either haven't been paying attention or don't understand it.
> It has terrible defense/army, terrible industry, terrible commercial balance in general, terrible innovation (the main reason of no tech stuff there
Yep, you don't understand it. Just for starters to illustrate how wrong you are... the EU doesn't have a military nor defence. France does. Bulgaria does. They have vastly different priorities and budgets and interests and industries. The EU has nothing to do with that other than the occasional collaboration or common funding like right now.
Also, innovation in EU countries is a very complex topic that again, if you're just dismissing as "terrible" because of EU legislation, you either don't understand the topic or haven't been paying attention. Things like market size and capital available impact the successfulness of newcomer innovator much more than the supposed lack of innovation many Americans who don't have any clue about what's happening decry.
The EU has many members who are in it primarily for the transactional benefits. If the EU eliminated external tariffs not only would the French be out on the streets again immediately, but one of the primary motivations for membership would evaporate and the EU would lose a lot of leverage over member states.