I really hope so. Right now most decisions are taken by the Commission and the ECB, which are neither directly nor indirectly elected by the people. A bit more democracy would help here.
Although I'm a firm believer that too much democracy is bad: see the topic of the day, where old and/or provincial people (fact) just voted hundreds of rights away from the younger generation and from urban people.
I'm sure our media will widely publicize any and all troubles brits will face in the coming months / years by not being part of our union and this will hopefully help reduce support for the most troublesome nationalist parties.
On the other hand, the UK never really played fair with the rest of us, what with keeping their own coin and having "tax haven" rates. So I'm not entirely sorry that they left. I'm sad for their younger people, of which I personally met a few in many occasions. This was a decision made against their will, which is never a good thing.
Most decisions were. Post-2009, legislation has to go through Parliament. The Commission remains the initial proposal engine, and makes executive decisions on some things, but in reality most of the urgent matters are dealt with by the Council, i.e. the elected heads of state. Commissioners these days are just people saying "wouldn't be nice if we did this and that?" and then elected MEPs hammer out details and eventually decide whether it looks sensible or not. A lot of Directives are actually fairly-generic guidelines anyway and can be "interpreted" at local level.
> and the ECB
Central bank independence is widely considered a pillar of economic stability. I have my problems with the ECB (mainly that they are fairly powerless in real terms), but not about being nominated vs elected.
So uhm, this trope that the EU is full of "unelected" people is not really up to date, although it was true in the past.
Are you talking about those too young to vote?
The ECB was modeled more or less after the German Central Bank who made the German Mark a huge success. There are good reasons to NOT make the central Bank "democratic" or a toy of politicians.
There are also significant movement and trade freedoms with Switzerland, which isn't even a member of the EEA.
The UK really has put themselves in a bad situation here. The main reason people voted to leave was immigration and to "take back power Brussels" and because they were convinced by the campaign that they could still get all the benefits of EU if they left. How will these people feel when they realise that they're going to need to join EEA which will mean the same level of immigration and less political power?
Also, I thought the way immigration numbers were used in the debate was appalling. If I remember correctly:
- The UK deals with 300,000 immigrants per year, of which 50% from inside the EU.
- The immigration target set by the government was 20,000 per year.
- That means the UK government was already allowing 150,000 of non-EU migrants in the country. And for these migrants, the UK does have full control.
How come everyone in the UK accepted this rationale as a valid argument against the EU, instead of a failure of the UK government?
The free movement of EU persons (and their families) holds in the whole EEA, independent of the Schengen Agreement. There are also EU rules about where refugees are settled, but the UK already had an opt-out from those.
> if the UK has not been part of the Schengen Area, then what controls did the UK lack?
The EU is not the only way to get the good bits of European integration. It badly needs some competition. I wish the UK would create a competitor to the EU and start advertising the new union to EU member states.