Sunday, February 21, 2016

To stay or go? UK to vote on membership in European Union

To stay or go? UK to vote on membership in European Union. - CSMonitor.com:
"...The final piece of the agreement was, in many ways, the most delicate.
And yet, for British voters, it touched on perhaps the most pertinent issue: immigration.
Cameron wanted to withdraw certain benefits from EU migrants, in an effort to stem the influx that has thwarted his immigration targets.
Some of the eastern European countries took exception to this, but in spite of their reservations, a compromise was reached, the most significant aspect of which was the “emergency brake,” which will allow in-work benefits for migrants to be reduced for the next seven years.
Specifically, while the UK had already made unemployment benefit unavailable to EU migrants, these new measures affect benefits available to people who are working, essentially forms of state assistance (such as tax credits) to help those on low income.
...Should the UK vote to leave the EU, one possible repercussion is a fresh vote on Scottish independence, meaning that breaking away from the European Union could, in turn, lead to the disintegration of the United Kingdom itself.
As for the EU, Dahrendorf Fellow on Europe-North America Relations Tim Oliver, at the London School of Economics IDEAS department, sees three possible outcomes of a so-called Brexit:

  • “[The EU] could integrate further, strengthening the power of the Eurozone and Germany; 
  • it could unravel, Britain triggering some form of domino effect that leads to further withdrawals; 
  • or it could muddle through as it has in the past, unified but strained.”

At this point, the vote is too close to call, and as the campaign machines grind into gear, they still have everything to play for...”

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