Asbestos in food? Attractive new opportunities for US pharma to sell opioids? Houses no longer need windows? EULAs on jeans, making you pay day?
Europe is very comfortable watching it from the sidelines. I'd say it's an interesting experiment, but unfortunately the last two years have shown it's rather boring and everything turns out exactly as anyone with even basic grasp on reality has said it would.
Things like blatant crime should still be regulated, but creating an easier regulatory environment for businesses in the UK is absolutely a given next step.
He will be focused on regulatory alignment with the US as he desperately needs to sign a US-UK FTA. And yes the US has a lot less regulations than the EU e.g. chlorinated chicken but in other areas it is not less but just different.
UK businesses are going to find the next decade extremely painful as they deal with trying to support US and EU regulations whilst also dealing with customs controls at the border. So all of the pain with none of the benefits.
This seems over-board.
Firstly, like in every country, most UK businesses don't sell abroad at all. So no, most businesses aren't going to find the next decade any different to the previous.
Secondly, businesses that wanted to sell into both EU and US markets already had two sets of regulations to deal with and would have done no matter what. That is no different to what it was before either.
Finally, businesses have been dealing with customs controls at the border for as long as international business has existed. That's hardly a big deal either.
He will be focused on regulatory alignment with the US as he desperately needs to sign a US-UK FTA.
No he doesn't. Plenty of countries around the world have perfectly fine economies and growth despite having no FTA in place with either the USA nor EU. It's nice to have but not essential for anything.
Now, "regulatory alignment" doesn't have to mean adopting the exact same rules as the USA. That's the EU's approach but it's often not the best approach. A simpler way to gain the same benefits in most cases is just regulatory recognition. In cases where there's no actual fundamental disagreement between systems, but actually unifying them is unwanted for reasons of political independence (i.e. retaining the ability to fundamentally disagree in future) both countries can simply choose to accept products that comply with each other's sets of laws.
The EU freaks out about this approach because the goal of the EU is not to make business easier but to unify Europe into a single country, and abolish the existing ones. Obviously to do that mutual recognition of standards is useless. Only obedience to a centrally controlled set of regulations will do the job. A lot of people in the UK have spent so many years under the thumb of this system that they find it hard to conceive of any other way.
One third do. As for the rest, they may not trade abroad directly, but their suppliers and customers certainly will.
Yes, I know it isn’t even coherent to expect “the EU” to grant the UK better access to the domestic markets of 27 nations than those nations give to each other, but when I raised this the response was either “that proves we should leave” or “that’s just project fear”, often preceded or followed with some comment about BMW, champagne, or the Spanish tourist industry.
Point is, they will renege on their promises on this topic no matter what, so while your argument would normally be sensible, nobody can rely on that this time.
The most that can be said is that the Tories (and the harder Brexiteers) have a significant majority, which makes moves towards deregulation more likely - that doesn't mean it's the right thing to do, or will happen without considerable push-back from people who are not quite so ideological (or who are, but of the opposite persuasion).
considerable push-back from people who benefit from the current regulatory structure
considerable push-back from people who are not quite so ideological (or who are, but of the opposite persuasion)
So no bean-counting nonsense here, just the benefits of standardization. Nobody would be angry at the EU for standardizing screw sizes, for example.
"It must be made clear that the demand for these standards came from the industry itself"
US is demanding regulatory alignment in agriculture and food safety as a condition of the FTA for example. And the US has significantly higher rates of food borne illnesses compared to the UK due to these weaker regulations:
>"One in six people in the US get food poisoning each year and one in 66 people in the UK get food poisoning each year."
Saying that while correct, the two specific studies use different methodology and should not be used together in a sentence.
I think there was real fear that Brexit was required to avoid a similar situation developing in the EU.
At least that was my understanding of today.
EU budget always had a kind of political and strategical value attached to it — e.g. to protect agriculture, which is sound strategically (to be able to feed yourself in isolation if it comes to that), but the deeper symbol is that Europe is very afraid of famine. In the 1940s, it all began with cooperation around coal, energy. The EU, at least originally, is built to ensure individual countries can't F with the really important stuff (between each other, nor shoot themselves in the foot).
Evidently, the mission has been met with some difficulties.
Of note, England negotiated a rebate before joining. So, it’s a demonstrated issue for them.
Customs controls need and are going to be imposed whenever there is no official agreement in place (and overseen by the ECJ) for regulatory alignment. And the ECJ oversight is a hard red-line for the UK.
Which means that it isn't a sliding scale. It's black or white. Either you fully align with oversight or you don't. And if you don't then you are hit with the full suite of custom controls.
There are 2 reasons.
The first is because ultimately you rely on the state's monopoly on legitimate violence to enforce those rules. If you want protection from fraud or simply outright theft, you need to rely on the mechanism of the state. And the state might determine that a contract or transaction, though voluntarily entered into by both parties, is still unenforceable because it unconscionable or harms the general welfare.
The other reason is the experience of the Great Depression, where for instance over 5000 banks failed in the US prior to the creation of deposit insurance. People making prudent decisions in good faith can still collectively make a system unstable. And if you lose you savings that's a problem for you, but it a few million people lose their savings that becomes a problem for society.
Obviously that is a simplification, but it shows why letting each customer choose for themselves how unregulated their bank should be is recipe for disaster.
A common set of rules across all banks ensures that they'll continue to work with one another.