Britain outside the EU

Originally Posted by RichardCoulter

UK accused of 'petty behaviour' over EU diplomat:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-55753669

I wondered whether someone would post this. I nearly did yesterday but couldn’t be bothered in the end.

The EU is not a nation state. It can send its representatives wherever it wants and if other countries, for their own reasons, want to grant their mission staff full diplomatic privileges that’s their business. However, we’re not obliged to do so. I see no reason why we should be giving Eurocrats carte blanche to ignore their parking tickets. They can pay up like the rest of us.

Unless of course the EU is actually a federal state in which case it can have the diplomatic status and France, Germany and the rest can surrender it...

[jfman]

Bad news for anyone that works there and wants run someone over in a car and flee back to the EU.

Originally Posted by Chris

I wondered whether someone would post this. I nearly did yesterday but couldn’t be bothered in the end.

The EU is not a nation state. It can send its representatives wherever it wants and if other countries, for their own reasons, want to grant their mission staff full diplomatic privileges that’s their business. However, we’re not obliged to do so. I see no reason why we should be giving Eurocrats carte blanche to ignore their parking tickets. They can pay up like the rest of us.

Unless of course the EU is actually a federal state in which case it can have the diplomatic status and France, Germany and the rest can surrender it...

Or...

We could just behave like 142 other countries (including the USA).

The British decision is in marked contrast to 142 other countries around the world where the EU has delegations and where its ambassadors are all granted the same status as diplomats representing sovereign nations.

and

EU officials privately accuse the Foreign Office of hypocrisy because when the EU's foreign service - known as the External Action Service - was set up in 2010 as a result of the Lisbon Treaty, the UK signed up to proposals that EU diplomats be granted the "privileges and immunities equivalent to those referred to in the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations of 18 April 1961".

[papa smurf]

Originally Posted by Chris

I wondered whether someone would post this. I nearly did yesterday but couldn’t be bothered in the end.

The EU is not a nation state. It can send its representatives wherever it wants and if other countries, for their own reasons, want to grant their mission staff full diplomatic privileges that’s their business. However, we’re not obliged to do so. I see no reason why we should be giving Eurocrats carte blanche to ignore their parking tickets. They can pay up like the rest of us.

Unless of course the EU is actually a federal state in which case it can have the diplomatic status and France, Germany and the rest can surrender it...

Hope we confiscated his sandwiches and pop

Originally Posted by Hugh

Or...

We could just behave like 142 other countries (including the USA).

and

As I said, I read it yesterday

I’m aware other countries choose to grant them diplomatic status but that’s their business. We are simply under no obligation to grant diplomatic immunity to representatives of an international organisation, even if other countries have chosen to do so. Barnier’s special pleading about the institution’s status doesn’t hold water. If the EU has in fact become what our own remain-minded commentators have always insisted it isn’t - a federal state of its own - then of course it can have full ambassadors here - as soon as the French, German and Italian ones go home. We have a US ambassador here; we do not have a Californian one.

EU officials having a private grumble that (quelle horreur) the British Government position today differs from the one it held a decade ago are simply betraying their continuing inability to understand that the British government has fundamentally changed its approach to the EU as a result of the democratic referendum held here in 2016.

[Sephiroth]

Originally Posted by RichardCoulter

UK accused of 'petty behaviour' over EU diplomat:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-55753669

The UK has put the EU into its place. It's really upset them and they deserve no less for their arrogance. They're treating us like shit and it would be a weakness on our part if we caved. We are not being petty.

The UK does not recognise the EU as a sovereign state for the purpose of diplomatic representation. The UK might have sort of acquiesced in the past (The EU points that out), when we were members; but that was before the majority of those voting in the Referendum made their view on the EU clear.

[jonbxx]

Meh, the ambassador thing is showboating and dead catting - appeal to the base, look tough in facing down Johnny Foreigner and quietly accord Vienna Convention rights a while later. Donald Trump did the same in 2019

[Sephiroth]

Originally Posted by Hugh

Or...

We could just behave like 142 other countries (including the USA).

Why? The other 142 countries haven't just left the EU and probably never gave the matter the same amount of thought.

---------- Post added at 16:30 ---------- Previous post was at 16:28 ----------

Originally Posted by jonbxx

Meh, the ambassador thing is showboating and dead catting - appeal to the base, look tough in facing down Johnny Foreigner and quietly accord Vienna Convention rights a while later. Donald Trump did the same in 2019

Nah to the Trump comparison. Nah-ish to the rest of what you said.

[Pierre]

Originally Posted by Chris

As I said, I read it yesterday

I’m aware other countries choose to grant them diplomatic status but that’s their business. We are simply under no obligation to grant diplomatic immunity to representatives of an international organisation, even if other countries have chosen to do so. Barnier’s special pleading about the institution’s status doesn’t hold water. If the EU has in fact become what our own remain-minded commentators have always insisted it isn’t - a federal state of its own - then of course it can have full ambassadors here - as soon as the French, German and Italian ones go home. We have a US ambassador here; we do not have a Californian one.

EU officials having a private grumble that (quelle horreur) the British Government position today differs from the one it held a decade ago are simply betraying their continuing inability to understand that the British government has fundamentally changed its approach to the EU as a result of the democratic referendum held here in 2016.

What he said.

[TheDaddy]

Someone said earlier that the government unveiled 23 million in aid to UK fishermen today, I don't remember that being part of the deal, taxpayers propping them up

We have a cunning plan...

Originally Posted by Hugh

We have a cunning plan...

That’s the same “clever ploy” the banks have all been implementing since the ballots were counted. As long as you have a subsidiary registered in an EU State you avoid most of the red tape. The reality however is that actually doing that is itself an excessive burden for many businesses.

The primary opportunity here is in the fact that small EU businesses now face the same barriers to trading here. It should be easier for British businesses to sell here without competition from EU ones. And, especially where what’s being sold is cheap Chinese tat that’s already sailed halfway round the world, it’s better for the environment if it’s warehoused and sold within the UK rather than being held somewhere outside Rotterdam or Frankfurt and then sent over here on fleets of HGVs.

So why couldn’t they do this before (British businesses warehousing the Chinese goods in the U.K.)?

Originally Posted by Hugh

So why couldn’t they do this before (British businesses warehousing the Chinese goods in the U.K.)?

They could. But with any low-value, high volume business it is difficult to start and vulnerable to competition - especially if the competition is coming from parts of Europe where the cost of doing business, especially wages, is so much lower that no British business could compete effectively. These are precisely the reasons why it is the norm in international trade for there to be tariffs and quotas. They protect your domestic businesses from competition that is structurally impossible for them to respond to.

[1andrew1]

Originally Posted by Chris

That’s the same “clever ploy” the banks have all been implementing since the ballots were counted. As long as you have a subsidiary registered in an EU State you avoid most of the red tape. The reality however is that actually doing that is itself an excessive burden for many businesses.

The primary opportunity here is in the fact that small EU businesses now face the same barriers to trading here. It should be easier for British businesses to sell here without competition from EU ones. And, especially where what’s being sold is cheap Chinese tat that’s already sailed halfway round the world, it’s better for the environment if it’s warehoused and sold within the UK rather than being held somewhere outside Rotterdam or Frankfurt and then sent over here on fleets of HGVs.

Isn't the bigger opportunity now for EU companies to sell in a market of 448m people without the competition from UK companies and to seize those orders from UK companies who do not find it economic to trade in the EU now? And I'm not sure doubling up on warehousing in the UK and EU is traditionally seen as a benefit to the environment.