How will you vote in the EU referendum?

I agree with the points Badenkate makes. The EU is pretty hot on health and safety in employment.

The government that we have at the moment is always going on about removing "red tape". A lot of this "red tape" are regulations to protect the country's citizens. As it is, we already have a situation where the rights of workers and consumers are being stripped away and there appears to be little will to rein in multi-nationals and banks - just imagine what this government will do if they are no longer subject to the protections provided by the EU.

Having read the contributions here I am more persuaded by the "in" than the "out" arguments.

Hi durhamjen. I have now had an opportunity to read more on TTIP the not now so secret discussions between the US and EU. Would I be right in thinking that if the UK is out of the EU that it would be excluded entirely from any such future negotiations or deals? Would you mind sharing your understanding of the implications of In or Out insofar as TTIP is concerned?

I remember one woman interviewed on the BBC saying we definitely needed to get rid of Europe and all that rubbish human rights palaver. Does make the mind boggle, truly.

Just caught up with this thread and yes, dj I do know what TTIP is. I do not believe that our trade with Europe or the USA would be affected very much at all if, as I hope, we leave the EU. There will be new treaties and new partnerships if we leave but the main advantage is that we shall be making our own decisions. I think the EU is doomed anyway. It just cannot suit the needs and aspirations of so many disparate nations.

In any case there is a very big world out there with many trading opportunities which we can explore in South America, India, China, Australia and New Zealand and Canada. I find the idea exciting and energising. We have always been a trading nation and we do not need to fear change.

Australia for one has forged other trading links in the Far East since being virtually abandoned by the UK when the UK formed stronger trading links with Europe.
We can't just expect these countries to welcome us back with open arms although we are attempting to form trading links with China - which is having its own economic problems now.

I can't believe that some people actually believe that leaving the EU would mean that all health and safety regulations would suddenly be abandoned and we wouldn't be capable of regulating such things ourselves.

Brussels is even making rumbling noises about paper-boys/girls now and threatening to limit even further the hours that schoolchildren can do part-time work - even in the holidays.

I think it's defeatist to assume we are solely dependent on Europe for trade. Of course other trade links have been formed by former major trading partners of ours - and will be again but of course we can be part of that too.

Jalima they will still want our goods, but will we get the same deal when we no longer need to scratch each other's backs? I doubt it. They'll want to drive down prices.

As for farming, I wasn't even thinking about food prices. I was thinking about how farmers will survive without the subsidies. Many farmers are only just keeping their heads above water now and only the smallest farms don't get subsidies. Leaving the EU could be disastrous for British farming and we'd become more reliant on imported food (not great for the environment, but I'm not bothered about that right now). I could be wrong, but until British farming recovers we'll probably pay more for food. British farming will struggle to be competitive without their subsidies, so that is bound to impact on food prices. Leaving could change the face of British farming for ever.

Ana, schoolchildren here seldom work, either during the school term or during the holidays. My DD did a lot of summer schooling, stagiare, during the holidays, sport mainly. Organised through the health Insurance.
Holiday jobs are advertised for College or university Students, and there are always a lot around.
Children leave school at 18 here.

I admire your confidence Ana, but having seen how political agendas are run by big business in this country these days, I wonder how much resistance would be made against 'easing' safety rules in the search for larger profits.

"Public services under attack

TTIP aims not only to relax regulations on the environment and food
safety, but also to secure the liberalization of services markets, including
the opening of public services such as health, education and water to
private firms. US companies are particularly keen to gain access to the
public health systems of Europe, which they see as vast markets still waiting to be tapped. The US government has confirmed that it will use TTIP to prise open the service markets of Europe for the benefit of US capital, and specifically that it will “address the operation of any designated monopolies” in the area of public utilities.

MPs in Britain have raised the alarm that TTIP could “destroy” the National Health Service as US companies gain the right to bid for clinical contracts.

The European Commission has claimed that public services will be kept
out of TTIP by virtue of an exclusion of services “supplied in the exercise
of governmental authority”, as defined in the WTO’s General Agreement
on Trade in Services (GATS).
Yet the Commission has long admitted that this clause offers no protection to public services, given its narrow definition of what would qualify for exclusion; as a result, the EU was forced to enter an additional limitation in its original 1995 schedule of services commitments so as to exempt its public services from GATS rules.
Since then, however, the Commission has moved to abandon this ‘public utilities’ exemption on the grounds that it actively wishes to see public services included within EU trade agreements, excluding only security-related services such as the judiciary, border policing or air traffic control."

This is from a War on Want report about the TTIP, Lavande.
rosalux.gr/sites/default/files/publications/ttip_web.pdf
The full report if you want to read it.

For those who want us out of the EU, the TTIP will mean that instead of being ruled by Europe we will be ruled by big US companies like Monsanto.
ISDS is part of TTIP. ISDS happens when a big company thinks its profits will be affected by other countries. Monsanto takes US states to court for not allowing GM crops.

If we stay in the EU, there is a large contingent of MEPs who are still fighting against TTIP, which, by the way, has been discussed in private for years, and would probably have gone through by now if it wasn't for groups like 38 degrees, War on Want, FOE and Greenpeace being against it as well as socialist and green MEPs.

Our government wants TTIP to go ahead with no protection for the NHS or any council or social protection. It wants privatisation of anything that can be profitable. It will be much easier for the government to come to an arrangement about TTIP if we were out of the EU.

Any help, Lavande?

Why are some posters assuming it's all or nothing situation from points others have mad?

Ana health and safety legislation was only raised as an example to demonstrate that not all EU regulation is bad legislation, as some posters seem to believe. There's no reason to think the UK isn't capable of deciding its own legislation. Obviously this was done for centuries before we joined the EU and it continues to do so all the time.

[That said, one of David Cameron's objectives of the current negotiations is to secure measures to improve competitiveness. He wants to set a target for the reduction of the "burden" of excessive regulation. An example of what he considers to be excessive regulation is the ‘Working Time Directive’ or ‘Working Time Regulations’. He wants to scrap the law that says someone can’t work more than 48 hours a week. At the moment an employee can voluntarily opt to work more than 48 hours, but if they don't want to opt out, they can’t be sacked or treated unfairly for refusing to do so. Who will this benefit?]

I think some posters think the EU decides on a new regulation and that's it, our law has changed. It's not like that at all. EU regulation has to be transposed in to UK law and as part of that process, the UK decides if it wants to legislate to a higher standard than required by the EU regulation (as it frequently does). Every country in the EU is required to draw up its own law based on the EU regulation as the minimum standard, but every country's law will be different to suit its own requirements.

Also The UK is one of the 34 members of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). According to the OECD, EU membership has not turned Britain into a highly regulated country. Despite EU membership, Britain's markets for goods and services are the second least regulated in the OECD (the Netherlands is the least regulated). Our labour markets are far more 'Anglo-Saxon' than 'Continental'. When it comes to employment protection, the UK ranks along side the other English speaking countries like the USA and Canada. The Continental non-English speaking countries have far more employment protection regulation than the UK. We've all seen that for ourselves.

gagagran nobody is saying we're dependent on the EU for trade, but at the moment over 50% of our trade is within the EU and that's a big gap to fill. The other EU countries also trade outside globally. For example, Germany trades four times as much with China than we do.

I'm not saying our economy would collapse if we leave the EU, but to think we'd be more able to trade in a global manner just doesn't hold up. We're free to do that now. People need to remember why we joined in the first place.

"People need to remember why we joined in the first place" - precisely Wilma - and it wasn't to be told by a faceless EU functionary that we can't have paper-boys or that we have to have ever more waste bins parked outside our homes in our streets and lanes, or that the European Court of Justice would have authority over our courts. That's the problem.

Most of us who voted "yes" were told, and believed, that we were voting to join a common trading market. It was never revealed that we would slowly lose control over our way of life with an aim of ever greater integration.

Our freedoms have been hard won over hundreds of years and we give them up to Brussels at our peril. The EU is really controlled by Germany and is in no way democratic. This referendum is what could be a final chance to loosen the shackles of the EU and return to control of our own country. The rest - trade, treaties with other non-EU countries will follow. The EU won't stop selling to us - they need the trade too.

I am interested to know, from those who protest about EU rules and regulations, which of these regulations have had a negative impact on their lives.
Would it be the regulations that are aimed at keeping workplaces free of injury and death?
Would it be the regulations that ensure our drinking water is safe and palatable and our bathing waters unpolluted?
Would it be the regulations that protect worker's rights e.g. maternity leave?
Would it be the regulations on food safety and advertising?

Compare with the USA in which the following applies to maternity leave:
12 weeks of unpaid leave annually for mothers of newborn or newly adopted children. This policy is distinct to other industrialized countries for its relative scarcity of benefits, in terms of the short length of protected maternity leave and not offering some form of wage compensation for the leave of absence.
And where the poor people of Flint, Michigan have had grossly contaminated water coming out of their taps.

What are these onerous regulations that are making your lives (and the lives of your children and grandchildren) so difficult?

Again I hear stuff coming out of the UK which confuses me, Rubbish collections; here in this much-maligned city we have, White bags for household waste, collected twice a week, Blue bags for re-cyclable waste i.e. cans juice cartons, Yellow bags for paper. The Blue and Yellow bags are collected every two weeks. Glass goes to bottle banks which are situated all over the place, Garden waste goes in Green bags collected every Sunday.
Rubbish collections are consistant even on Christmas Day.
Flanders has one of the highest rates of re-cycling in Europe, if we can do it easily and efficiently why can the UK not. ???????

The problem for many here in the Uk with regards recycling is simply space to store all the various bins and bags. It's fine if you live somewhere with masses of outside space or even somewhere with just enough room to house all of the various bins but many people do not. I also regularly witness our sorted recycling (papers and cardboard, glass and plastic) all thrown in the collection truck together so I really can't see the point of sorting it in the first place.

The crucial point is that we did not vote for anything other than a trading agreement but have had all these other policies and regulations foisted on us willy nilly with no right to reject them in a vote.

Of course some of them are admirable BUT we have had no say in whether we want them Is that so difficult to understand? Some people are happy to be part of a United States of Europe it seems but many of us are not. As a sovereign nation, we can decide for ourselves which of the suggested reforms and regulations suit our way of life.

I think continental parents seem to have a better attitude to bringing up children than we do here.

I don't think schoolchildren should be doing paper rounds or weekend jobs. Not with the work they need to put in to keep up with modern day studies.

I just hope Cameron can get the non-payment of benefits for EU immigrants for the first four years, through in time. Which is looking rather unlikely.

The rest of it, I'm not worried about. (Best to stay in).

Well surely it is down to some better organisation, i live in a one bedroom apartment in a street of very old traditional houses with narrow pavements.
There seem to have been so many cuts to Councils money in the Uk that there just is not the resources to pay for extra rubbish collections.
That cannot be blamed on 'Brussels'.
The commune system is the way it works here, you pay local rates directly to your own local area, town, city and that is where the money for rubbish collection comes from.
You are also entitled to a once a year free pick up of large waste, furniture etc.
Perhaps it is up to people to lobby the government or local councils for better services instead of blaming everything on 'Brussels'.
We also pay a lot in taxes, social fund and local rates here, the more people are prepared to pay the better the service perhaps.
Do not get me wrong, there are a lot of problems here, no country is perfect but the UK is the only one I have lived in or have contact with where everything people do not like is blamed on 'Brussels', which is of course a city NOT an Institution.

I think what a lot of us object to is not that the regulations coming out of Europe are necessarily bad because they're not, but that we are being 'told' by faceless people that we didn't vote for, whose names we're completely ignorant of, whose politics we're unsure of, how to run our country, what rules and regulations we 'must' obey in all aspects of our lives. In other words being dictated to! We're not children and all of these things we can actually, maybe surprisingly(!) do by ourselves through our own elected Parliament where and when we see fit, without being pushed about by unelected bureaucrats. We'll recycle as and how our own government dictates, same with paperboys/girls!! not how Europe tells us!

Excuse me nigglynellie but 1. we do vote for MEPs. and 2. what exactly are they pushing you into that you don't like? Anything?

One of the things that always bothers me about the leave or stay in the the EU is this:

The leave camp maintain we can forge better relationships with the rest of the world, and trade more independently - but other than finance and service sector - especially providing tax refuges such as the Caymans or Isle of Man - what do we trade with? The UK doesn't have much to trade with it seems.

In November 2015 all exports (manufacturing, cars, electronics, oil) were down, and only jewellery (precious metals) grew. Out of our top 5 export partners only Germany, Switzerland and China grew. 7 of the top 10 countries we exported to were in the EU bloc.

The stay in camp seem not to want to address issues of identity. The lack of a crackdown on employers who employ labour from within (and beyond) the EU, at less than the minimum wage doesn't seem to come in for much attention.

This confrontational approach seems to be taking us backward, with little or no information from the media about benefits and disbenefits of membership, and no mention of how the processes impact our daily lives.

What are the benefits of the Working Time Directive for instance, or those that affect atmospheric pollution - be it noise, or chemicals. The Land Rover does not now meet pollution requirements - if we leave the EU, would we restart production to UK only standards - where would we then sell them.

I don't know, but I'd like to learn more before deciding.

Many people seem to talk about unelected Eurocrats - but we did vote for our MEPs - perhaps it is they who we should be addressing. The MEPs mostly talk about how directives are handed down - but they are also amended and implemented by national parliaments.

We wanted the single market badly in 1992, but clearly the free movement of resources was not understood by the political classes to include people as well as cash and trade.

Maybe our MPs - Cameron and Osborne included - need to consider the impact on people and not just their electability.

In 1975 I voted "In" because I thought it was just for trade, i.e. a Common Market. Look at it now: a vast bureaucratic parliament telling us what to do, no approved accounts for 20 years, a complete move of everything once a month to Strasbourg and back. A company operating like this would have been bankrupt years ago. But still we keep on contributing. LEAVE!

Nigglynellie, that was my point, our rubbish collection system is Different from the UK and works well, every country has a different system, the only 'rule' is to re-cycle where possible.
If Belguim can do it with the Institutions on our doorstep why can't the UK?????
I and most people agree on the Strasbourg agreement, the French insisted upon it and it is a complete waste of time. Although it is the Parliament which meets there not the Comission.
I was head Chef in an Irish Pub for a while in the European Quarter and it was hated as the lunchtime takings dropped substanially. It is also a pain for Parliament workers having to go there and paying for accomodation etc, only the MEPs actually get expenses and it is up to them and the country they represent if staff who have to attend get paid extra.