Question

What is the downside of having membership in the European Union?

Answer 1

The expense of EU membership in the United Kingdom is £ 15bn gross (0.06% of GDP) or £ 6.883bn net. See the budget of the UK government. (UKIP claims that the total cost of EU membership amounts to £ 83bn gross if you include all possible costs, such as the' estimated' regulatory cost of £ 48bn–or £ 1.380 per capita The ONS estimated a net contribution cost of £ 7.1bn.

The Common Agricultural Policy accounts for a large percentage (40 percent) of EU spending. This skewed agricultural markets for many years, by imposing minimum food prices. It leads to higher consumer prices, which promotes over-supply. CAP reforms have reduced the waste, but not removed it. A major current issue with CAP is that it has compensated large landowners with little social benefit reflection. See: Migration of funds from poor to wealthy landowners (Guardian) While the UK is guilty of refusing CAP restrictions.

EU membership doesn't necessarily mean euro membership. Nevertheless, the EU has given great importance to the single currency. It has, however, proved to have a lot of problems and led to low economic growth rates and high unemployment across the EU. Luckily, the UK remained out of the Euro. Most southern European countries have faced pressure from the EU since 2008 to implement austerity–spending cuts to reach budget deficit goals, but these austerity measures have led to prolonged economic stagnation in the middle of a recession. In fact, when some economists have suggested that this is counter-productive, Greece was pressured by its creditors to embrace austerity.