Quote:
Originally Posted by Osem
There are certain things we can veto and others we can't and the other members can all too often get their way when the UK happens to differ. That's fine for them but not for us when we don't want to be part of the Euro for example.
The history of our membership is irrelevant now - we are where we are. Yes the EEC could have been a wonderful thing but somehow it morphed into the EU and evidently the UK didn't/couldn't prevent that. The EU will not budge on its core ambitions and we can't veto or argue any of that reality away. That's why we must get out and stay out to better serve the UK's own interests.
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Copied and pasted from Wikipedia, here's what we (or any nation) can veto;
membership of the Union (opening of accession negotiations, association, serious violations of the Union's values, etc.); change the status of an overseas country or territory (OCT) to an outermost region (OMR) or vice versa.
taxation;
the finances of the Union (own resources, the multiannual financial framework);
harmonisation in the field of social security and social protection;
certain provisions in the field of justice and home affairs (the European prosecutor, family law, operational police cooperation, etc.);
the flexibility clause (352 TFEU) allowing the Union to act to achieve one of its objectives in the absence of a specific legal basis in the treaties;
the common foreign and security policy, with the exception of certain clearly defined cases;
the common security and defence policy, with the exception of the establishment of permanent structured cooperation;
citizenship (the granting of new rights to European citizens, anti-discrimination measures);
certain institutional issues (the electoral system and composition of the Parliament, certain appointments, the composition of the Committee of the Regions and the European Economic and Social Committee, the seats of the institutions, the language regime, the revision of the treaties, including the bridging clauses, etc.).
Otherwise, qualified majority voting applies which needs at least 16 countries AND 65% of the population to say yes. Germany has 16.5% of the population and 8.4% of the influence.
The UK did sign the Maastricht Treaty by the way. I am sure many people here voted for the Conservative party in 1992 and therefore voted for the party that has instrumental in the transformation of the EEC to EU. John Major was PM if I remember rightly. Nearly lost his majority because of it.