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Originally Posted by Chris
The argument is indeed a smokescreen.
Nobody who is in any way familiar with the EU's enthusiasm for regulating everything from the colour of fire extinguishers to the pre-packaging of olive oil could seriously and with a straight face suggest that it is in the same league as obligations we sign up to bilaterally with organisations like NATO and the UN.
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It's not just NATO and the UN. It's also trade deals. Look at the amount of laws and regulations a trade deal may require. The recent Canada-EU deal imposed a bunch of
requirements on Canada:
- requiring Canada to comply with the Trademark Law Treaty (Canada is not a contracting party)
- requiring Canada to accede to the Hague System for the International Registration of Industrial Designs
- creating new legal protections for registered industrial designs including extending the term of protection from the current 10 years to up to 25 years
- requiring Canada to comply with the Patent Law Treaty (Canada has signed but not implemented)
- requiring Canada to establish enhanced protection for data submitted for pharmaceutical patents.
Canada has had to accede to all those requirements (and some more on copyright) just to get a deal with the EU. They're mostly boring copyright provisions but one the less they are there on the request of the EU and not their sovereign Parliament. The North American Free Trade agreement has imposed a
bunch of regulations as well. The coming Trans-Pacific partnership will allow corporations to challenge the state irrespective of the laws they've passed (although the exact circumstances a bit unclear to me):
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trans-...ion_.28ISDS.29
Then we have Norway. They don't have a trade deal granted but they've had to take EU laws they can't control and even
freedom of movement in order to get a deal.
How do you know that Olives and Fire extinguishers won't find themselves subject to regulation under any EU-UK trade deal? Trade deals are far more than just the abolish of tariffs which are rarely the main limitation of trade these days anyway.
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The sovereignty argument is a powerful one, indeed, it is the only one that transcends crises like the Euro and the migrant situation, which will wax and wane over time. It is no surprise to me that we are beginning to see specious arguments attempting to turn what is actually very straightforward into something that is all shades of grey.
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Because it is all shades of grey as Canada, Norway and countless others can testify too. The Out campaign want to make it straightforward because they want to promise something they're in no position to promise. In the end there will still be many areas of regulation and laws that will be dictated by the trade deals we sign and the organisations to which we belong.
The EU is on a bigger scale but it's not the only example of it. Another one is the european convention on human rights to which, as I understand it, we're not going to be leaving anytime soon. The European Court will still overrule our courts.