Wednesday, 24 December 2014

UK loses bid to opt out of benefits with Turkey: More Foreign Meddling! – Who actually won the war?

Britain loses yet another case in the European Court!

A quietly issued ruling by The European Court means that Britain could face having to pay benefits to Turkish migrants and their families. Britain sought to exercise an opt-out from the EU-Turkey agreement and took the case the European Court where the UK Government had argued it should be allowed to opt out of an agreement giving workers from Turkey the same benefit rights as those from the EU. 

Ministers feared the Brussels ‘power grab’ would make Britain an even more attractive destination for immigrants and would lead to higher spending on welfare payments and pensions. This ruling means any Turks who are allowed to come to Britain to work will be able to claim benefits for themselves and their families as well as building up pensions, which they could then transfer back to their home countries if they retire there. Of course, they still have to obtain a visa and right to work which is anything but easy here these days, unless you are Somalian, Nigerian or such-like!

Whether or not in reality, Britain does end up shelling out a pile of cash in this direction is far from certain, for whilst there are a great many Turkish people already living in the UK, indeed many are friends and near-neighbours of this columnist, 100% of these are working, some running their own businesses and very much ‘in the system’ so to speak, in so far as they fully account for their taxes and so forth. So is this a Mail on Sunday/UKIP scare-mongering story? Some might argue this to be the case, but perhaps we should look deeper, for the UK does seem to be on the losing end of most analogous cases where the European Court gets involved. Ironically, this simply adds fuel to the Out of Europe campaign, one which is fervently supported by the writer.

Britain is in many ways a unique member-state of the European Union in as much as it is not only one of the largest net contributors to the entire cabal, it is the only nation that failed to allow its electorate a vote on whether we joined or not. The referendum in 1973 was for the Common Market, the EU followed the EEC which is something else we didn’t get a vote on either. 

It is here argued that the primary reason why successive governments have not allowed a vote on further and deeper European integration is because each has known intuitively, that the outcome of the vote would be resoundingly negative AND in the event that we do get an in-out vote in 2017, it is likely that more than two-thirds of the electorate will vote in favour of leaving and this writer will cast his vote in a like-manner too. Of course, this materially depends on our having a Tory government next May and as things stand, this is far from a certainty although at least the weak, pro-Federal EU Lib Dems are likely to cease to exist post-May 2015 and this has to be a good thing.

The main thrust of the argument being made within this article has nothing to do with the limited possibility that we might have to make payouts to Turkish migrants. It is more that the UK has slowly but surely lost its ability to govern its own affairs. More and more legislative powers are being ceded via the Channel Tunnel to what is effectively a foreign entity and a non-democratic one at that. Britain more than just contributed to winning two World Wars yet Germany has in effect, gained far more pan-European dominance in peace time than could ever have been so achieved in war! Some politicians actually want a Federal EU and these are not limited to the Lib-Dem benches either as there are both Tory and Labour MP’s who share this ambition. Indeed the Prime Minister himself is intuitively pro-EU although not, thankfully a Federalist. 

To quote Winston Churchill in respect of Europe, consider these words: "We are with Europe, not of it. We are linked but not compromised. We are interested and associated, but not absorbed."


 Chris Green

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