EU miscellany

A couple of weeks late I notice Donald Tusk's,

Obsessed with the idea of instant and total integration, we failed to notice that ordinary people, the citizens of Europe, do not share our Euro-enthusiasm. Disillusioned with the great visions of the future, they demand that we cope with the present reality better than we have been doing until now.

I am encouraged by the lack of smug self-satisfaction but I wonder how well these comments are received outside the conservatives.

Christoph Schult writes in Der Spiegel,

Brexit would pave the way for deeper integration … The European Parliament could also finally receive the upgrade it needs to democratically legitimise EU decisions. None of this can be achieved with Britain as an EU member.

I haven't followed Martin Schulz's efforts closely over the past couple of years but: what's that about? What reform is in mind that Britain opposes?

A leaflet from Scottish Vote Leave asserts that,

While we're in the EU, we are not allowed to negotiate our own trade deals. This means we currently have no trade deal with key allies such as Australia, New Zealand, or the USA – or important growing economies like India, China or Brazil.

Oxford commas aside, no doubt the long-term rosy future they imagine for an independent UK involves many such deals. What I don't know is why the EU doesn't yet have such deals: would we be able to do better in negotiating something advantageous? This Brexit picture has for me been short on detail from credible experts in international trade.

The above leaflet also cleverly asks us,

Imagine the question was the other way round … Would you vote to join the European Union?

This seems to me a cunning and effective tactic to help undecided voters off the fence. I can't help but feel that the Remain campaign has been lacking such; I don't know if they're defending a position that's intrinsically short of soundbites or if they're just worse at marketing. I doubt that the focus on avoiding economic problems of varying plausibility and severity can be relied upon to win enough hearts, especially when entanglement with the creators of the ERM and the Eurozone is the alternative: I wonder if something more positive could be sold.

For me the EU referendum is an instance of a more general voting problem: each option has its pros and cons. Multi-criterial tradeoffs are never easy or pleasant and in this case they're compounded by considerable uncertainty.