Why rejoining the EU is so problematic

In his latest piece Wolfgang Münchau writes that if Brexit happens then

“the EU you may wish to rejoin will be different from the one you are leaving. From a British perspective, the EU was little more than a customs union and a single market. If the UK ever decides to rejoin, it would have to do so under Article 49 of the Treaty on European Union. That would be the full Monty — with the euro, the Schengen zone, EU involvement in home affairs, no opt-outs, and no budget rebates.”

He is probably right. Probably because no one can be sure how the EU will evolve, but its history suggests it is unlikely to evolve in the direction of reducing its scope.

However he draws the wrong implication from this. He says that those arguing for Remain should give up, accept that the UK will leave the EU, and start thinking about making the case for rejoining. Münchau has gone from misunderstanding the economic arguments to simply discounting them.

If I was asked whether the UK should rejoin the EU on the terms in Article 49, which means joining the Euro, I would not know how to respond. Joining the customs union and Single Market is unquestionable beneficial from an economic point of view, but joining the Euro with its current structure is almost certainly bad for the UK.

Austerity may have ended in the aggregate Eurozone, but the lessons from the Eurozone crisis have hardly been learnt. The fiscal rules that EU countries are meant to follow are a disaster. The ECB was forced to create OMT, and therefore can act as a lender of last resort, but whether it invokes OMT or not remains entirely in the hands of this largely undemocratic and unaccountable institution. No other central bank in the world has this kind of power over whole countries, power that we have seen it deploy against EZ members during the crisis and after the crisis.

None of this means that the Euro has to fail. As we have seen, there is no popular will to leave the EU in Ireland or Greece. In addition most countries have no desire to formalise a two speed EU (which is in my view a shame). As a result, a country like the UK should think very seriously about giving up so much of its freedom by adopting the Euro. This is why the decision not to join in 2003 was correct, and why the opt out from the Euro within the EU was so useful to us. The arrangement that we had, and which we have decided to leave, is so valuable it is worth fighting for every inch centimetre of the way.