Hello guys, I have written a short piece on the EU, suggestions/improvements welcome, this can be considered a first draft if it's not to people liking. Thanks, FarLeft What is the European Union (EU)? The EU is a union of member states from Europe who have voluntarily agreed to work together on political and economic matters. The basic idea is that by working together member states can achieve greater things by pooling their resources (money, knowledge, experience, raw materials etc). What does this mean in “real” terms? As stated by the European Commission this allows citizens to move more freely from one member state to another as well as goods, services and capital. The EU also ensures anti-competition and anti-trust laws are not flouted by corporations establishing monopolies such as the lawsuits against Microsoft fining them 899m Euros in 2008, 280m Euros in 2006 & 497m Euros in 2004 and against Intel in 2009 for 1.06bn Euros. Then there is the conservation of marine biological resources (under the common fisheries policy) and common commercial (trade) policy. Confusion... In the UK at least there is a lot of negative feeling and misunderstanding towards the EU yet when probed to more specifically say what they are against the EU doing you tend to get comments like... the EU costs tax-payers however many millions/billions or most of our laws are made by Brussels. While it is difficult to actually find out the facts, some conservatives say 84% of laws come from Brussels, UKIP say 75%, David Cameron says “almost half” and the house of commons say 9.1%. A good explanation which argues that its more like 10-20% can be found here. At the same place can be found a good analysis of the real cost of the EU for the UK which argues it's closer to 0.1% of the UK's budget rather than UKIP's 12% (almost £70bn) or as chief executive of the tax-payers alliance Matthew Elliott states £118bn that's nearly 20% of the UK's budget! What should be clearly noted is what the EU does not have authority over member states on, such as industry, culture, tourism, education and civil protection (disaster prevention). One thing that springs to mind is the UK opting out of the working time directive (WTD) meaning that UK workers can work more than 48 hours per week! The rest of EU workers may not (apparently there is more to life than work, who'd have thought?!). Mixed feeling among the left There are some on the left are against the EU, mainly because they perceive the EU as being good for big business but bad for working class people, though unable to provide anything to support that view. There are those who are opposed to the concept of a united Europe on the grounds that it's a capitalist union working to strengthen the stranglehold the ruling class has over the working class. Then there are those who support the EU, citing it as a step towards a united socialist states of Europe, acknowledging that while the current EU has made some steps towards improving worker rights and getting rid of our borders with each other there is still a lot of work to be done to push forward to achieve a union that truly represents the working peoples of Europe and their interests.
it seems like a good article
I recommend this article of James Turley. It is quite a good read.
