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A comment on UK expected to be only major economy to shrink in 2023 – IMF. Parent comment

Re:UK expected to be only major economy to shrink in 2023 – IMF by riffraff on Tuesday January 31, 2023 @09:59AM (#34595825)
no, they were not, Turkey and Switzerland are not in the EU nor in EEA, but they can sell (some) of their goods to EU countries with no taxes due to specific agreements.

UK explicitly chose to avoid such arrangements.

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Re:UK expected to be only major economy to shrink in 2023 – IMF by drooopy on Tuesday January 31, 2023 @10:17AM (#34596114)
Turkey, Switzerland, and/or even russia (pre-Ukraine war) are part of the EU Customs Union that the UK chose to stay out of.
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Re:UK expected to be only major economy to shrink in 2023 – IMF by riffraff on Tuesday January 31, 2023 @11:04AM (#34596878)
not switzerland, and I have no idea why you think Russia was ever part of the EU customs union.

But the point is that staying out of the customs union was not an "inevitabile result of leaving the EU", it was a choice separated from it.

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Re:UK expected to be only major economy to shrink in 2023 – IMF by fidgewidge on Tuesday January 31, 2023 @03:09PM (#34601169)
The UK didn't choose to avoid such arrangements and requested many times for a comprehensive free trade deal.

The problem is that the EU considers arrangements such as those with the Swiss to be legacy, deprecated and no longer on offer. They have also spent a lot of time pressuring Switzerland in various ways to try and force it to become a de-facto member-without-membership. They don't want any country in Europe to have any option other than membership, whereby membership means full control from Brussels without local elections having any meaningful outcomes. That is their goal and doing a trade deal with the UK would have undermined that.

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