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Britain 's Relationship With The Integration Process

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There has always been a debate concerning Britain’s relationship with the integration process which resulted in the division among those in favor of the Britain’s leaving the European Union and those who oppose it. According to Beloff and Beloff (1996), backing of Britain’s membership in the EU are associated with individuals who saw the possibility of economic benefits remaining in or the economic dangers that would take place from being left out or recently from socialists and members of the trade union who thought that Europe could be solicited to counter-balance the market philosophy of post 1979 British governments. These supporters are the pro-Europeans or pro-integrationists. On the other hand, are the anti-Europeans or Euro …show more content…

Anti-Europeans argue that the fact of the matter is you do not have to be in a political union in order to trade and membership of the single market imposes too many regulations on Britain in exchange for too little opening on European markets. As stated by Stewart (2015), EU trade ties prevent Britain from making more lucrative deals with Asia. For example in 2013, 5% of British exports went to India and China. But Germany sells more than Britain does to these economies; 10% of German exports went to India and China in 2013. In line with anti-Europeans, “out” campaigners highlight that Britain’s are better off without the EU because it can gain access to Europe’s single market without the rules of the European Union as compared to being a member-country that trades with the EU and has to conform to its regulations and policies.

Despite this anti-European view regarding trade, EU membership significantly increases Britain’s trade with other member-states because the EU is the UK’s main trading partner worth more than 52% of the total trade in goods and services (BBC News, 2015). While there is little evidence that EU membership decreases trade with countries outside the union; Simón (2015) argued that Britain is homebased to a large amount of EU and US foreign direct investment than any other EU economy and is the number one location for investment from other leading markets. Apart from this,

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