Referenda are a growing fad for we europeans: the Hungarians are also to hold one.
Years ago, Tony Blair said that the British public could not be entrusted with a referendum about EU membership - I guess no one is listening to him nowadays.

France
 

Regarding the myth of the EU status quo I am going to do some digging around and have a pop at France.
Simply because France lay at the "heart of darkness" in the birth of the current setup, from the coal and steel community to what we have today.

"France, quite rightly looks to its own interests in all things, why shouldn't the UK do the same ?
The EU has put itself at a major disadvantage by creating the Euro which was not properly founded on even the most basic principles of a common currency. Because it wasn't done properly, it has become the engine for all the eurozone's ailments and worse, in the past 5 years, no attempt has been made to sort it out. The consequence is that today you have two choices, break the currency up or become a Federal European State where the nation states as political entities cease to exist.
To do this, you need to ask the voters of each country whether they agree with this, no sign of that happening is there ?
Next year there are elections in both Germany and France which is just one more reason why our PM has caved in with his negotiations.
These could see Merkel removed from office because of her mishandling of the refugee crisis and Marine Pen as the French President. The EU is in a mess of its own making and whether the British stay or leave will have no impact on the consequences of the foolishness of the eurozone leaders which has brought their countries to such a sorry state."
- abstracted from elsewhere with a modicum of additional commentary.

So not official figures then. Seemingly not even correct interpretation of the figures.

The status quo is the current state of affairs. Strange that you feel that the status quo is the state of affairs 50 years ago.

Each to his own, I guess.

bier

I guess this depends on whose version of officialdom we depend upon.
As for "correct" interpretation of the figures we are getting an amount of reporting within the UK now about how our own government intends to control their own ministers who don't wish to follow the party line.

Here is some more "official" data:

Export performance has been deteriorating | OECD READ edition


Which is drawn from the extensive library of the OECD:-
Export performance has been deteriorating - Assessment and recommendations - OECD Economic Surveys: United Kingdom 2015 - OECD iLibrary

The Transparency International figure that I cited earlier has used OECD data for their own "interpretations".
Has http://www.transparency.org.uk/ corrupted their own use of published data for their own nefarious purposes??
From their own website:-
"Transparency International UK is a registered charity. We are the UK chapter of the global Transparency International movement. We are financially independent and raise our own income in order to undertake our work. We receive donations and earn income from a number of different sources including statutory bodies, charitable trusts and foundations, the private sector and individuals.
Our views and policy recommendations are based purely on our research, and we will not accept any source of funding where a funder seeks to influence these. We undertake due diligence to ensure that accepting a source of funds will not compromise our independence or that of the wider Transparency International movement."



Ultimately, we all have to make our own interpretations or fall into line with Blair's point of view (the earlier post number 361)

Not 50 years ago, but over many centuries of "development", the latter in all areas of activity undertaken by mankind - that is the real status quo.

For instance, I am somewhat surprised that there has not been more discussion in here about our system of law compared with mainland Europe, but that may arise when the undue influence of France is mentioned, again.

France, again
 

The EU was founded on the Coal and Steel community as a means of stopping French occupation of the Ruhr and Saar region at the end of WW2 (peeved because they really wanted massive reparations à la WW1) and the French coal piracy from those areas and getting some fair and efficient economic cooperation between 2 nations who needed each other to resuscitate a base industry.
Monnet (rather out of guilt), Schumann and Adenauer.
Strasbourg is where the French 'demanded' (French verb – demander) the ECB to be situated. Remember EU Parliament caravans each month between Brussels and Strasbourg and, you'll love this, the parliament secretariat is in Luxembourg.


The EU was forged out of the Coal and Steel Community which the French were forced to accept when their post-war plans to annex the Saar and control bits of the Ruhr were scotched by the Brits and Americans.
It started as the second best option for France's interests, but led to France creating a union in its own image.

Just a bit of 50-60-70 year old history.
"Countries have no friends, only interests".

The talk of official data, statistics, interpretation and the like reminded me of this piece of EU harmonisation from 2014:-

Drugs and prostitution add £10bn a year to UK economy - Telegraph
It's hard to keep a straight face at times, especially when driving past all the hookers hanging out on the main highways of Strasbourg, or Rouen for that matter.

Europe today
 

Before looking further at the case of France in greater detail, it is worth considering just a few, almost random, points about how the EU is lined up at present.

The Visegrad nations: yep, up to now they like the EU, especially in the case of their un-reconstituted politicians. They recognise the same system of direction given to them as they were all too familiar with when part of the USSR; centralised 5 year plans that never quite seem to work out but, hey, there is always the next 5 year plan to keep us busy and the people don't seem to mind.
Meanwhile the populations have been kept content and relatively quiet with major handouts of largesse from you-know-where.
But, they also know how to rise up and revolt.
Hungary: 1956, short, sharp and brutal.

Checho-lands: 1968, ditto.

Poland: Solidarity for years.



France: keep buying/paying off the farmers via the CAP and all is well with the world.
Wales: ditto.


Germany: is it really possible that Frau Merkel is a reformed communist from the late-lamented DDR? (The DDR never did revolt in the manner of the Visegrad nations).
(one of the Ds in DDR relates to "democracy") :innocent:

And quite right so... albeit the concept of "democracy" in that context is not the same as used by the rest of the people. The D for "Democracy" in the DDR along with several other similar cases in other communist countries refers to the Leninist-Stalinist concepts of democracy which has nothing to do with the concept of democracy in civilized world. One word, two whole different meanings. To the current systems in most European Countries they refer as "Burgeois Democracy", something to abolish under communist doctrine for they don't consider it to be a democracy at all.

The Leninist-Stalinist concept of democracy is still used by some extreme left parties nowadays such as Podemos in Spain, Syriza in Greece (although these had to cave to proper democracy or risk bankruptcy) or Bloco de Esquerda in Portugal. Unfortunatelly the vast majority of people don't know enough about the history of communism to understand that the democracy to which these parties refer is not the same currently in existence in these countries and, of course, the parties themselves are quite happy to keep the fiction. Otherwise the people would understand that these parties' concept of democracy equates dictatorship in layman terms or "Dictatorship of the Proletariat" as defined by Marx and Engels.

Should Britain leave the E.U. ???
 

UK government releases report on brexit; 'would affect the lives of millions'

http://www.theguardian.com/politics/...uk-report-says

Just an open question to those who want out and see the EU as this fascist monster vampire squid sucking out UK sovereignty - if the EU was such a threat to the government why would it publish a report that is pro-EU?

One man - one vote where Angela Merkel was the one man casting the one vote would at least be more efficient than having a Parliament, commission and courts wandering about the place overruling each other.

The countries that make up the EU are not equal. They can (as one example) either chose to make the German finance ministry responsible for sorting the Greek economy (as they did the East German one) with all the pain that would involve, or they can let them go to the wall under their own free will and let things sort themselves out later. Constantly telling lies and papering over the cracks is not going to end well though, it only builds up pressure that will make the resulting explosion worse.

Andy

Flip side of the coin - about 80 years ago
 

Whereas, on the other side of the totalitarian fence, during roughly the same period, Hitlers' rise to power was funded by German industrialists aided by funding from the USA of the day - after the USA entered WW2 (more than 2 years after it kicked off in Europe) that nation considered who had been assisting the Nazi party to come to power; one such was the father of George W.
Bankers win-win, no matter who does the dying bit.

France part deux, or trois or whatever
 

"France knew that any EU in which they predominated must have an economic infrastructure that mirrored France's exceptional (to the rest of Europe and still so) format. Their quality, niche-brand and special products base had to be protected. Thus a protectionist (both labour and product), closed-shop, rather incestuous, vastly over-regulated trading network and an attempt at shared currency under the aura of social democrat market meddling. Wisely, they saw the need for this economic frailty to be politically supported. Thence a centralised, statist approach - where else is the public and private sector border so blurred, executive preponderance (pretty Napoleonic), legislatively accommodative (Napoleon again ) and not independently accountable - no Sir Humphreys (UK civil service) for whomsoever the Commissionaire, but the Commissionaire's own politically aligned 'chef de cabinet'. and an internal audit vehicle.


The French rushed, especially under the Anglo-Saxon phobic CdG, to get this done before UK, Ireland and Denmark entry (Norway was in that original group but gave up largely because of centralism) with more economically competitive and politically liberal views inhibited French ambition. Thus the two vetos and the slapping down on the basis of (here we go again, bad history) any granule of German assertiveness.
CdG also made sure of Belgian and Luxembourgois support in his political Legoland.
A problem was that even on entry UK made no effort to understand the structure, administrative method of the EU. UK never had other than a junior, non-permanent cabinet post to look after the EU and never briefed her only Chief of Commission (Woy Jenkins) to useful effect.
Germany did not assert until her reunification was assured (with the quid pro quo to France of taking the €).
So, in some ways, France has the most to lose by UK-driven reforms, slight as they might be, and this accounts for the eventually self-ruining obduracy of France, personified by the vacuous Hollande"

- another abstract from elsewhere.