(It has done so by creating common minimum standards and getting member-states to recognise each other’s rules. Since trade between EU member-states is tariff-free, the EU has focussed on the non-tariff barriers to trade that arise from 28 different sets of national regulations. The economic aim of the EU is to deepen integration between member-states’ economies. A smaller proportion of EU immigrants receive benefits than do Britons, and EU migrants are net contributors to the public finances, helping to pay for the pensions and healthcare of an ageing society. Fourth, there is little evidence that migrants from elsewhere in the EU reduce Britons’ job prospects or their wages.
The experience of countries like Norway shows that this would involve accepting many of the rules of the single market, and a contribution to the EU’s budget, but with little influence on EU decision-making. Third, EU markets are of such importance to national prosperity that after a vote to leave, British negotiators would try to secure access to them. Second, EU rules do not place large burdens on the British economy as a whole, or large constraints upon British exports to countries outside Europe: ‘Brexit’ would not be an economic liberation. First, the level of economic integration between the UK and the rest of the EU is very high, so healthy doses of competition and investment from elsewhere in the EU help to raise British productivity. There are four reasons why these claims are ill-founded, and are a poor rationale for leaving the Union. Immigration from the EU diminishes Britons’ employment prospects, and requires the British taxpayer to subsidise public services and provide welfare benefits for newcomers.
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