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- There is no such thing as ‘EU funding’. The UK contributed £13 billion to the EU budget in 2015, of which we received £4 billion back in ‘EU funding’ (HM Treasury, 2015) and were told how to spend it. We are no richer, nor freer, under this arrangement
- EU membership is not a condition of participation in the Erasmus scheme. Iceland, Norway, Macedonia, Liechtenstein and Turkey are all full-participants, and there are an additional 22 non-EU members who are partners of the scheme (Erasmusplus.org)
- UK universities always have been, and always will be, world leading institutions in their own right. 5 of the world’s top 20 universities situate in the UK, compared to zero in the rest of the EU (QS World University Rankings, 2015)
- The EU has been a disaster for the employment prospects of young people. Youth unemployment is 19.4% in the EU and as high as 48.9% in Greece (Eurostat, 2016)
- 3 million jobs will not be lost if we leave the EU (Institute of Economic Affairs, 2015).Even if 3 million UK jobs did rely on trade with the EU, by the same calculation some 6.5 million EU jobs rely on trade with the UK (House of Commons Library, 2006). Trade will continue!
- Do we seriously believe that the advances in women’s, workers’ or minority rights could not have been achieved by our own, democratically elected Parliament? It’s precisely because these issues matter, that we want them decided by the representatives we elect
- ‘Official figures’ claim that the EU influences 53% our laws (House of Commons Library, 2010). This should be zero!
The EU is not a democracy
Currently in the EU only the 28 unelected European commissioners can propose new laws. The elected European parliament doesn’t have the power to propose new laws. The UK is consistently outvoted in the European parliament. The people we’ve elected have no influence in the EU. The EU makes the majority of UK laws and these are damaging to the UK. By the European commission’s own estimates EU regulation costs business €600billion every year. It’s time to give control of our laws and our futures back to the people we’ve elected in our own parliament.
The EU is expensive
The UK pays a net contribution of £10 billion to the EU every year. If we leave the EU we could match any funding the EU currently gives us and eliminate tuition fees with the £10billion a year saved. The EU gives us some money of our gross contribution back, but remember it was your money to start. There is no such thing as EU money.
Britain will get a good deal outside of the EU
Both the Erasmus and Horizon 2020 programs are open to non-EU countries; the UK has a lot to offer them. Of the top 20 QS world ranking universities 5 are from the UK and none are from the rest of the EU. The EU would be denying themselves of opportunity if they restricted the UK’s access to these programs. The UK is world’s 5th biggest economy and buys £60billion more than it sells to the EU each year. It’s in the EU’s interest to give us a good deal after leaving.
The EU restricts the UK’s trade
The UK doesn’t have a representative on the world trade organisation; we had to give up our place to be represented by a single EU member. The UK cannot make its own trade deals. The EU only has trade deals with 2 of the UK’s top ten non-EU trading partners and no trade deal with the USA, Japan, China, Brazil or India. Europe and Antarctica are the only two continents in the world that aren’t growing. More than half of the UK’s exports go to non-EU countries. Leaving the EU allows us to improve our trade with the rest of the world.