Why don't we leave the EU? Join the Swiss in EFTA

SkepticOne

maggy_thatcher wrote: »

But that's my point - if you have increased your costs to internal purchasers, then other businesses who are using your product as its raw material has found that its cost has gone up - so your statement that your internal costs remain the same is invalid except in the very narrow corner case of someone who is purely importing one product and exporting it without any additional internal purchases.

If what you are saying is that by devaluing say by 20% you don't suddenly become 20% more competitive then obviously that is true. No one is claiming otherwise. That does not mean that we don't need to bring down internally generated costs though. All devaluation is is a means of doing this.

However it it is possible you are defining internal and external costs differently to me. I would class, for example, wages as an internally generated cost.

maggy_thatcher

SkepticOne wrote: »

If what you are saying is that by devaluing say by 20% you don't suddenly become 20% more competitive then obviously that is true. No one is claiming otherwise. That does not mean that we don't need to bring down internally generated costs though. All devaluation is is a means of doing this.

However it it is possible you are defining internal and external costs differently to me. I would class, for example, wages as an internally generated cost.

Other steps to reduce internal costs:

1. Improve efficiency - particularly with regards to public services
2. Lower taxes - need to be careful here obviously as our public finances are in a disastrous state.
3. Reduce social welfare/minimum wage.

None of these are as drastic as pulling out of the Euro.

I'm defining internal costs as things like wages and also purchasing goods from other internal manufacturers. If the cost of goods goes up, then wages have to start going up as the cost of living rises; driving inflation.

SkepticOne

maggy_thatcher wrote: »

Other steps to reduce internal costs:

• Improve efficiency - particularly with regards to public services
• Lower taxes - need to be careful here obviously as our public finances are in a disastrous state.
• Reduce social welfare/minimum wage.

But note that you would have earlier objected to some of these on the basis that they reduce economic activity or do you concede that point?

I'm defining internal costs as things like wages and also purchasing goods from other internal manufacturers. If the cost of goods goes up, then wages have to start going up as the cost of living rises; driving inflation.

No wages don't have to go up simply because the cost of living goes up. There are plenty of countries where wages are much lower than ours in proportion to their cost of living. Unfortunately one way or the other we have to become more like them.

K-9

SkepticOne wrote: »

If I need to make an analogy to illustrate a point to someone else I will. Remember it is you that have dived in not realising an analogy is being made.

However I also realise that not everyone 'gets' analogies so I will answer your literal minded question.

Despite the recession and despite vacant units rents in Ireland are still high in Ireland, and, like other costs, must come down. There is nothing we can do about it. If landlords have overextended themselves in debt then they are going to be in difficulty. It may be the case that other landlords need to step in and purchase those properties cheaply so that they can be rented out again at a lower price. This will happen with or without devaluation and arguably to a greater extent if the economy suffers because we can't lower costs sufficiently without devaluation.

No need for the smugness, your analogy is very good so I thought we could run with it! :rolleyes:

The above process is already happening, rents down by about 20/30%. Commercial leases are a problem, NAMA will help with that as it will hold a hell of a lot of Commercial property.

SkepticOne wrote: »

How much of these exports you refer to are due to transfer pricing? How much of it is indigenous where the money stays in the country?

Please see the article by Constantine Gurdgiev entitled
Economcis 10/04/2010: Ireland's Competitiveness - not improving

Well, multi nationals are the biggest exporters by far, mainly to the Euro area. There should be more indigenous exporters but that hardly is a new phenomenon since the Euro, we've been on about this for years. Indeed, the biggest cost of the property bubble I see, is that we wasted the "easy" credit on houses, unlike other countries in the Euro.

sirromo wrote: »

Yes, the boost to our economy would be a temporary stimulus to held bring unemployment down and thereby reduce public spending. We can't afford to increase our deficit by funding a fiscal stimulus but if we leave the euro we'll be able to provide a monetary stimulus that will help our economic recovery by making our exports more competitive.


And that's because there wasn't the same demand for housing in those other countries.

Cheap Credit + A young population = High consumption + over-investment in housing




I've no interest in arguing over what caused the problem. I'm more interested in how we solve the problem. I've no problem admitting that we are entirely to blame for size of the housing bubble - if that is in fact the case. I don't believe we are entirely to blame though and I don't know why people like yourself are so reluctant to admit that the policies of our central bank (the ECB) had as much of a role to play in causing our housing bubble as the Federal Reserve's policies played in fueling the housing bubble in the US.




I don't know why that was. From the point of view of the Irish economy I think it was a good thing that our currency was worth less than the currency of our closest and most important trading partner.




I don't believe devaluation did fail. I don't know exactly how much the devaluation in 1993 contributed to our economic turnaround in the second half of the 1990s but I would imagine that the role it played was significant.

As you admit yourself, devaluation is a temporary boost and as I pointed out our previous devaluation was really p*ssing against the wind as 4 years later we probably should have devalued again.

Cheap credit and a young population does not necessarily mean over investment, it just doesn't. Add tax breaks and incentives for builders and investors, that should have been stopped 5/6 years ago, tax incentives for FTB's and zero regulation over bank lending and then you get a bubble.

I have no problem seeing low interest rates was part of the problem. There is a reluctance by Euro sceptics to see that the bubble was caused by zero regulation. We had powers to stop this, we didn't use them. There seems to be this belief that the bubble happened because of the Euro and low interest rates and we were somehow helpless in all of this.

K-9

BetterLisbon wrote: »

Well NZ farmers has subsidies taken away and agriculture boomed. The imbalance in favour of larger farms in CAP has been a "target of reform" for decades.

Yes, it also led to the ruination of small farms.

bonkey

K-9 wrote: »

There seems to be this belief that the bubble happened because of the Euro and low interest rates and we were somehow helpless in all of this.

There seems to be a lot of feeling that we were both helpless and blameless.

The whole "we need to leave the EU to fix this" seems to be an extension of same. We are helpless and blameless that it is broken, and helpless to fix it.

Its all someone else's fault and someone else's problem.

Scofflaw

bonkey wrote: »

There seems to be a lot of feeling that we were both helpless and blameless.

The whole "we need to leave the EU to fix this" seems to be an extension of same. We are helpless and blameless that it is broken, and helpless to fix it.

Its all someone else's fault and someone else's problem.

Funny, really, since I seem to remember that before the extent of the crash became clear, there was no rush from those quarters to pin the responsibility for our apparent prosperity on the EU - even at the time of the earliest debates on Lisbon I, the argument was that our material progress had nothing to do with the EU, and indeed, if anything they'd held us back by - ironically - "excessive regulation".

In fact, I have a lot of difficulty recalling any Irish eurosceptical commentator who felt the bubble was a problem at the time, whereas I do recall the negative reaction to the EU's chiding of McCreevy for pursuing the pro-cyclical policies that eventually blew up so spectacularly.

cordially,
Scofflaw

SkepticOne

K-9 wrote: »

I have no problem seeing low interest rates was part of the problem. There is a reluctance by Euro sceptics to see that the bubble was caused by zero regulation. We had powers to stop this, we didn't use them. There seems to be this belief that the bubble happened because of the Euro and low interest rates and we were somehow helpless in all of this.

I think most people on both sides of the argument would agree that the bubble had several causes one of which (a very important one) was interest rates. The reason it is important is that it governs your ability to pay back loans which in turn determines in part how much a bank is willing to lend. maggy_thatcher on this thread said:

maggy_thatcher wrote: »

We relied too much on internal building because (in general) the Irish people are afraid of renting - I think it goes back to the generations where people lived in fear of landlords evicting them.

What we should have realised is that when we joined we would not change suddenly to becoming savers and renters and that the cheap money that came with joining the eurozone would be channelled into property purchasing.

K-9

Finfacts had a good piece on it:
Ireland, Greece and leaving the euro

The Greek Central Bank Governor raised some good points:

• Any devaluation of the new currency would increase the cost of imports, raising inflation.
• Monetary policy would lack the credibility established by the European Central Bank. As a result, inflation expectations would rise.
• Expectations of further devaluations would arise, increasing both currency-risk and country-risk premiums.
• The above factors would push up nominal interest rates, leading to higher costs of servicing the public debt and undermining fiscal adjustment, thereby taking resources away from other, productive areas.
• The costs of converting currencies with the remaining members of the Eurozone would be re-introduced, inhibiting trade and investment.
• The exchange-rate uncertainty with the euro area would increase the costs of conducting business, further deterring trade and investment.
• Existing euro-denominated debt would become foreign-currency debt. Any devaluation of the new domestic currency against the euro would increase the debt burden.
• Greece would no longer benefit from the economies of scale, including the enlargement of the foreign exchange market, which decreases the volatility of prices in that market, derived from sharing the euro.

SkepticOne

K-9 wrote: »

Well, multi nationals are the biggest exporters by far, mainly to the Euro area. There should be more indigenous exporters but that hardly is a new phenomenon since the Euro, we've been on about this for years. Indeed, the biggest cost of the property bubble I see, is that we wasted the "easy" credit on houses, unlike other countries in the Euro.

I meant to respond to this earlier. The reason I mentioned transfer pricing is because you can have what appears to be a boost in exports but it need not have much impact on the economy where it matters. Nor need it mean that we've become more competitive. All that is happening in Ireland is that profits are booked here for tax purposes. The real work is done elsewhere. The companies that engage in this don't really care about costs in Ireland since only a small amount of work is done here yet large profits booked.

This is why I pointed you to the article by Gurdgiev which shows that competitiveness has not improved during the current downturn.

K-9

Its disappointing if wages aren't dropping significantly, they had been dropping last year:
Employment in Irish industry fell 21,300 in 12 months to Q2 2009 despite rise in pharmaceutical production; Private sector unit labor costs also dipped

On the competitiveness point, devaluation will not solve the underlying pressure on it here. People would need to take an unselfish approach after devaluation with rising loan repayments, cost of living and using a risky newly established currency. With the reaction of Unions to the Croke Park deal, I don't have much confidence in that.

There are structural problems in the Irish economy. Devaluation doesn't solve that.

As for the transfer pricing point, fair point, they still are exports. Belgium has a similar system which explains the high % of exports to Belgium. Whether we like it or not our export sector is dominated by multi nationals and will be for sometime, even with a serious attempt to address it.

Good piece explaining the difficulties of devaluation here:
David McWilliams - - a short-termist like his Celtic Tiger villains?

As Jim O'Leary pointed out - "pretty well all balance sheets in the economy, those of households, banks, the non-bank corporate sector and the government, are denominated in euro. If this remained the case, the effect of devaluation would be to cause acute and widespread financial distress and an unacceptably high level of ongoing foreign currency exposure for domestic residents.

The logic of devaluation therefore would call for balance sheets to be redenominated in domestic currency, which would meet strong resistance among creditors and might in a great many instances be subject to a successful legal challenge.

In addition, there is the huge technical challenge that would be posed by the transition from euro membership to a restored national currency. This would require a great deal of public planning and preparation (no easy tasks in themselves – particularly when the public administration system is already under acute stress). But it would also present a clear invitation to all those firms and individuals with domestic bank deposits to move their funds offshore in anticipation of recommendation and devaluation. The result would be that the banking system would grind to a halt.

The balance of the argument so far is tilted heavily against renouncing the euro, so heavily as to render the idea academic. And that’s before factoring in the political considerations, which are compelling in their own right."

K-9

bonkey wrote: »

There seems to be a lot of feeling that we were both helpless and blameless.

The whole "we need to leave the EU to fix this" seems to be an extension of same. We are helpless and blameless that it is broken, and helpless to fix it.

Its all someone else's fault and someone else's problem.

Maybe the Central Bank that got it wrong wasn't the European one, maybe it was the Irish one?

Irish Central Bank declared its impotence before launch of the euro; Why Spain's biggest banks survived huge housing boom

Scofflaw wrote: »

Funny, really, since I seem to remember that before the extent of the crash became clear, there was no rush from those quarters to pin the responsibility for our apparent prosperity on the EU - even at the time of the earliest debates on Lisbon I, the argument was that our material progress had nothing to do with the EU, and indeed, if anything they'd held us back by - ironically - "excessive regulation".

In fact, I have a lot of difficulty recalling any Irish eurosceptical commentator who felt the bubble was a problem at the time, whereas I do recall the negative reaction to the EU's chiding of McCreevy for pursuing the pro-cyclical policies that eventually blew up so spectacularly.

cordially,
Scofflaw

Indeed, saving for a rainy day was frowned on by our Minister of Finances and even our own Central Bank.

Irish Economy: A citizen sick of an economist's "whingey, whiney voice"

View

DaBrow wrote: »

Greenland left the EC or EU back in the 80's... They still have trading links with Europe.

Yes. In Greenland's case it is because they are in effect a "Home Rule" region of Denmark. As such they are covered as part of the EU-OCT (Overseas Countries and Territories) agreement. It is hard to see how an non-EU Ireland could be classified as OCT as there would be no "Mother country" to which we would be formally linked.

DaBrow wrote: »

EFTA States have little or No Tarriffs to Pay if trade is within the EEA; this is because the European Economic Area is to allow the freedom of Travel, Trade, Capital and working rights to all citizens that live within the geographical boundary.

EFTA membership does not mean EEA membership (Switzerland is not an EEA member).

You are making the assumption that all the EEA member states and the EU collectively would be happy to modify the EEA agreement to suit Ireland. That might well be the case for the EFTA EEA members but, if I recall correctly, one of the (political) reasons why the EU wanted the EEA agreement was that it made future entry to EU easier for EFTA states. As such, I wouldn't see any obvious reason why the EU member states would want to facilitate Ireland's "future entry" into the EU were we just after leaving the EU!

View

BetterLisbon wrote: »

Ever heard of our bilateral arrangements with the UK on employment and estaishmt rights?

EU rules trump them. At the moment that is a bit of a moot point since both Ireland and the UK are EU member states, however should Ireland ever leave the EU, then the UK would apply EU rules. Hence, any EU citizen would have preference in the UK over (a non-EU) Irish citizen.

View

BetterLisbon wrote: »

The members of the EU and EFTA created the EEA in the early 90s. The EU members conduct their affairs collectively (and the EFTA members individually) that is true but EU members are EEA members in their own right as such we can be EEA members without being EU members. By joining EFTA we avoid any headaches about market surveillance etc.
Remember Austria, Finland and Sweden crossed from EFTA to the EU without having to reapply for EEA membership so crossing in the other direction is similarly seamless.
Now if my read of the EEA is wrong please point out my error and i will yield to the better man.

The EEA agreement has been modified several times to take account of new member states joining the EU and also that Switzerland did not join the EEA. That would include the cases of Austria, Finland and Sweden.

I refer you to the agreement itself:

Article 2
For the purposes of this Agreement :
(a) the term "Agreement" means the main Agreement, its Protocols and Annexes as well as the acts referred to therein;
(b){6} the term "EFTA States" means the {7} Iceland, the Principality of Liechtenstein and the Kingdom of Norway;
(c) the term "Contracting Parties" means, concerning the Community and the EC Member States, the Community and the EC Member States, or the Community, or the EC Member States. The meaning to be attributed to this
expression in each case is to be deduced from the relevant provisions of this Agreement and from the respective competences of the Community and the EC Member States as they follow from the Treaty establishing the European Economic Community {8};

If you note - the "EFTA states" are specified by name (the {7} refers to the fact that Switzerland is not one of them). Likewise, the "Contracting Parties" refers to the EU (as a collective and/or as member states).

If Ireland leaves the EU, it would no longer qualify as one of the "Contracting Parties", nor would it be one of the specified "EFTA States". Hence, Ireland would be in effect fall outside the scope of the EEA agreement.

SkepticOne

View wrote: »

EU rules trump them. At the moment that is a bit of a moot point since both Ireland and the UK are EU member states, however should Ireland ever leave the EU, then the UK would apply EU rules. Hence, any EU citizen would have preference in the UK over (a non-EU) Irish citizen.

Not the case. Irish citizens have had rights in the UK that predate EU membership of either country and go beyond what is granted under normal EU rules, e.g. the right to vote in each other's general elections.

View

sirromo wrote: »

I don't think they'd be happy about it but I think they would learn to live with it. People in the border region would be outnumbered by people in the rest of the country who would would be willing to pay a small price for regaining control of our borders.

Regain control of our borders? You do realise the only border we don't have control of is the one with UK (and NI in particular)?

It is hard to see how - with an open border with the UK for most of our history - we could ever have been described as having gained control of our borders in the first place.

sirromo wrote: »

What about Britain, the most euro-sceptic nation in the EU? We are their fourth biggest market. Don't you think they might want to avoid anything that might make it more difficult for them to trade with their next-door neighbour?

Germany and France are more important to Britain trade wise. Having to chose to either go with your 2nd and 3rd biggest trading partners or go with your 4th biggest one wouldn't be a nice choice to make of course, but it would not be a difficult one.

sirromo wrote: »

Even if this wasn't possible, we could recoup much of the costs of the EU's tariffs on our exports by imposing retaliatory tariffs on EU goods entering our market. A devaluation of our currency would also make our exports cheaper and so the EU tariffs would probably not have much of an impact. If that didn't fully cover the costs of the tariffs we could consider cutting our corporation tax to drive costs down further.

DeValera tried something similar in the 1930s with the UK. It didn't succeed then and we were a lot less export dependent at that time. Still no doubt the EU/ECB would be happy to loan a non-EU Ireland the money to try to undercut the EU...

View

SkepticOne wrote: »

Not the case. Irish citizens have had rights in the UK that predate EU membership of either country and go beyond what is granted under normal EU rules, e.g. the right to vote in each other's general elections.

Australia and New Zealand had trade agreements with the UK that predated the UK's EU membership. Those were "modified" when the UK faced an either/or choice when it was joining the EU.

You are welcome to point out the international agreement(s) that specifies the rights the Irish citizens have in the UK that predate EU membership. In the case of voting, UK citizens did not have the right to vote in Ireland until over a decade after we joined the EU. Irish citizens had the right to vote in the UK, as I understand it, for largely historical reasons - Irish citizens retained (and for older people still retain) the right to British citizenship for literally decades after independence.

SkepticOne

View wrote: »

Australia and New Zealand had trade agreements with the UK that predated the UK's EU membership. Those were "modified" when the UK faced an either/or choice when it was joining the EU.

You are welcome to point out the international agreement(s) that specifies the rights the Irish citizens have in the UK that predate EU membership. In the case of voting, UK citizens did not have the right to vote in Ireland until over a decade after we joined the EU. Irish citizens had the right to vote in the UK, as I understand it, for largely historical reasons - Irish citizens retained (and for older people still retain) the right to British citizenship for literally decades after independence.

I'm not sure what you mean by "international agreement". Do you mean some formal document registered with the UN? If so, please explain why that is relevant.

The travel and work arrangements between Ireland and Britain, as I said, predate EU membership. Whether it is a formal signed agreement is irrelevant.

We also have an arrangement to vote in each other's general elections that go beyond normal EU rights. Again whether this is a formal signed agreement or a historical legacy is irrelevant.

What it means is that not everything is determined by the EU. If Ireland left the EU then these arrangements would continue since they have nothing to do with the EU in the first place.

K-9

SkepticOne wrote: »

I'm not sure what you mean by "international agreement". Do you mean some formal document registered with the UN? If so, please explain why that is relevant.

The travel and work arrangements between Ireland and Britain, as I said, predate EU membership. Whether it is a formal signed agreement is irrelevant.

We also have an arrangement to vote in each other's general elections that go beyond normal EU rights. Again whether this is a formal signed agreement or a historical legacy is irrelevant.

What it means is that not everything is determined by the EU. If Ireland left the EU then these arrangements would continue since they have nothing to do with the EU in the first place.

Do you have a source for this. I do know about the previous agreement but we'd need to be sure we have this agreement with our nearest and closet trading partner after devaluation.

View

SkepticOne wrote: »

I'm not sure what you mean by "international agreement". Do you mean some formal document registered with the UN? If so, please explain why that is relevant.

It is relevant because unless:
a) these practices were formally agreed prior to both member states joining the EU, and/or,
b) these agreements (or informal practices) are referenced in the EU Treaties,

then EU Treaties and laws would take precedence.

On the one hand, there would be specific EU Treaty provisions and laws that the UK had committed itself too with the other EU member states; on the other, special pleading based on informal historic practice from Ireland. I would suggest that the likelihood of the UK - much less the ECJ - ignoring the EU's rules in favour of Ireland would be basically zero.

SkepticOne

The right of Irish to travel and work in the UK (and vise versa) would continue after one or other or both countries were to leave the EU for this very simple reason.

The arrangement has nothing to do with the EU. It is a separate arrangement between two sovereign nations.

If either Ireland or the UK left the EU or both left the EU then this arrangement would continue unless terminated by the countries concerned.

If you want to prove this wrong then you need to show where in EU legislation it says that all agreements made outside the EU between two countries that happen to be in the EU have to be terminated when one or both countries leave the EU.

DaBrow

"Germany may be poised to quit the euro to set up a smaller monetary union because of the Greek crisis, according to a leading City economist.

Athens was yesterday edging closer to activating a bailout from fellow European Union countries and the International Monetary Fund, which is due to send teams to the country on Monday."

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldnews/article-1266659/Could-Germany-quit-euro-Greece-crisis.html#comments#ixzz0lO7jTaKz

This is certainly a development and shows that the Euro might possibly exit in a dramatic shocking fashion.

http://www.dailyfinance.co.uk/2010/04/16/could-germany-crash-out-of-the-emu/
"Could Germany eject from European Monetary Union? It's one that analyst Joachim Fels from Morgan Stanley has just raised in a client note.

He says the Greece rescue package now sets a worrying precedent for the rest of the EU "and make it more likely that the euro area degenerates into a zone of fiscal profligacy, currency weakness, and higher inflationary pressures over time."

anglo_celt

Flamed Diving wrote: »

Anything but you being wrong, I guess. I agree with Scofflaw's statement above. You just disregard any evidence which contradicts your position, for any spurious reason. Thus, any discussion with you is pointless.

Oh dear I wonder if Biffo has a Swiss Bank A/c:D

Flamed Diving

anglo_celt wrote: »

Oh dear I wonder if Biffo has a Swiss Bank A/c:D

One does wonder...

View

SkepticOne wrote: »

The right of Irish to travel and work in the UK (and vise versa) would continue after one or other or both countries were to leave the EU for this very simple reason.

The arrangement has nothing to do with the EU. It is a separate arrangement between two sovereign nations.

As I asked you before shows us where this arrangement exists. It shouldn't be hard to point to the relevant documentations - laws, regulations etc.

SkepticOne wrote: »

If either Ireland or the UK left the EU or both left the EU then this arrangement would continue unless terminated by the countries concerned.

If you want to prove this wrong then you need to show where in EU legislation it says that all agreements made outside the EU between two countries that happen to be in the EU have to be terminated when one or both countries leave the EU.

Okay. I refer you to "Council Resolution of 20 June 1994 on limitation on admission of third-country nationals to the territory of the Member States for employment". Link is here (Third-country nationals are non-EU nationals).

In it, we find:

C. Principles governing Member States' policies

(i) General criteria

- Member States will refuse entry to their territories of third-country nationals for the purpose of employment,

- Member States will consider requests for admission to their territories for the purpose of employment only where vacancies in a Member State cannot be filled by national and Community manpower or by non-Community manpower lawfully resident on a permanent basis in that Member State and already forming part of the Member State's regular labour market. In this context they will apply the procedure laid down in Part II of Council Regulation (EEC) No 1612/68 of 15 October 1968 on freedom of movement for workers within the Community (1), in the light of Commission Decision 93/569/EEC (2) on the implementing of the Regulation, in particular with regard to Article 15 (16);

- without prejudice to the application of the above two criteria, third-country nationals may, if necessary, be admitted on a temporary basis and for a specific duration to the territory of a Member State for the purpose of employment where:

- such an offer is made to a named worker or named employee of a service provider and is of a special nature in view of the requirement of specialist qualifications (professional qualifications, experience, etc.),

- an employer offers named workers vacancies only where the competent authorities consider, if appropriate, that the grounds adduced by the employer, including the nature of the qualifications required, are justified in view of a temporary manpower shortage on the national or Community labour market which significantly affects the operation of the undertaking or the employer himself,

....

ii) Procedure for admission employment

A third-country national will not be admitted for employment unless prior authorization has been given for him to take up employment in the territory of the Member State concerned. Such prior authorization may be in the form of a work permit issued either to the employer or to the employee.

In addition, third-county nationals must also be in possession of any necessary visa or, if the Member State concerned so requires, of a residence permit.

(iii) Restrictions as to the scope of employment

Initial authorization for employment will normally be restricted to employment in a specific job with a specified employer.

(iv) Restrictions as to the period of admission for employment

....

Other third-country nationals admitted to the territories of the Member States for employment will only be admitted for a period not exceeding four years in the first instance.

Lastly, lest there be in any doubt that an non-EU Ireland and an EU UK could continue to operate an ad-hoc cosy little arrangement on anything other than a short-term basis:

(vii) Third countries with close links with a Member State

Nothing in these principles prevents a Member State from continuing to admit third-country nationals to its territory for the purpose of employment pursuant to arrangements concluded by that Member State by the date of adoption of this resolution for nationals of a third country with which it has especially close links.

The Member States will undertake as soon as possible to renegotiate such arrangements in accordance with the terms of this resolution.

...

In other words, the Member States (not just the UK) are legally committed to renegotiating any nice little arrangements - whether formal or otherwise - that might predate Ireland's EU accession. That means you need to persuade the Greeks, Poles etc. not just the British.

Leaving the EU means we abandon clear-cut legal rights that we already have. There is no obvious reason why we should follow such a policy since it is largely based on the assumption that we might be able to persuade the EU to grant us - as a non-member - the rights we had just abandoned.

thebman

We should just go to Camelot instead, it makes as much sense IMO.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lfGpVcdqeS0

cc

I can't believe people think leaving the EU and behaving like an ex-soviet republic by advocating trade wars and such makes sense. You must all be geniuses or freakin' loons. I think if you cared about this country at all you wouldn't be willing to risk it by implementing untested and risky policies because of your ideologies.

SkepticOne

View wrote: »

In it, we find:

We also find:

(vii) Third countries with close links with a Member State
Nothing in these principles prevents a Member State from continuing to admit third-country nationals to its territory for the purpose of employment pursuant to arrangements concluded by that Member State by the date of adoption of this resolution for nationals of a third country with which it has especially close links.

Thanks for the link. No problem leaving the EU and the UK continuing its arrangement with Ireland.

View

SkepticOne wrote: »

We also find:Thanks for the link. No problem leaving the EU and the UK continuing its arrangement with Ireland.

Read the text in full. It all applies. Not just the bits that you want to apply.

Note the part that follows:

The Member States will undertake as soon as possible to renegotiate such arrangements in accordance with the terms of this resolution.

The "arrangement" would "as soon as possible" have to be brought into line with the resolution quoted above. Once that happened, as "third-country nationals", work permits etc. would apply to any (non-EU) Irish citizens who wished to live and move in the UK.

As of yet, you still haven't established that there is, or ever was, any arrangement "concluded" by the UK wrt Ireland that meet the criteria specified in the clause you partially quoted.

There is no evidence to back up your assertion that there is "No problem leaving the EU and the UK continuing its arrangement with Ireland". The text of the Council resolution clearly shows there would be a problem.