The European Union (EU) is an economic and a political
partnership between twenty seven member states, one of which is the UK. The
work carried out by the EU and it’s member states covers a variety of functions
including military operations, economic partnerships and legislation to name
but a few.
The EU and our membership is a topic of hot debate as much
in the House of Commons as it is on street corners and cafes across the
country. Personally I can see the benefits to being a member but I can also see
some of the downsides.
The EU benefits the UK in many forms including subsidies,
mutual trade agreements, a greater international presence, greater protection
from co-operation in law enforcement, greater protection for the environment by
setting mutual targets and finally according to a report from the South Bank
University around 3.5 million people’s employment is dependent upon the UK’s
membership to the EU.
With all the positives there are naturally going to come
some negatives and these are generally certain EU rules and regulations appear
to be excessive and inefficient, the EU has a great deal of power to create laws
which affect the UK with very little oversight from the UK government and as
with any large group or gathering items take longer to be implemented and
implementation can at times be overly bureaucratic. Whilst these are obviously negative
I think the two main negative aspects are the loss of UK sovereignty in the
form of the right to control its own borders and legislation and the EU is
completely unaccountable to the public in the UK.
According to The Telegraph (1) in November 2011, the UKIP
indicated that the EU cost Britain £50m per day or £18.4bn per year. This is
clearly an incredible amount of money if this estimate is right and it does beg
the question whether or not the money could be more effectively used inside our
country rather than being given away.
The trade agreements that currently exist for EU member
states promote greater trade between member states and if we were to leave the
EU then we would ultimately be putting trade at risk. That said, I believe trade
agreements could be created between the UK and the EU member states, but this
could affect employment in the short term.
The decision of whether to stay within the EU or to opt out
is one which I believe is far too big for one person, one party or one
government to make. The outcome of any decision will last far longer than any
government and will have long lasting effects for decades to come. I believe
this decision should be subject to a referendum.
To ensure that the referendum is fair I would put together
two research groups. The first would be a pro-EU research group and the other
being a pro-non EU group. Both groups would produce a document indicating the
positives and negatives of being a member of the EU and the positives and
negatives of leaving the EU. This information would be published direct to
government websites and in to public libraries and councils so that the public
at large can view the whole documents.
The documents would be independent of any government scrutiny;
therefore they would be made available as direct transfers from the two groups.
We would allow enough time for the documents to be reviewed by the public and
we would then hold a referendum.
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Email : realchangerealpeople@ymail.com
The Candidate