Being a part of the EEA and not the EU basically means that you accept most rules from the EU while not being able to influence anything.
The UK really has put themselves in a bad situation here. The main reason people voted to leave was immigration and to "take back power Brussels" and because they were convinced by the campaign that they could still get all the benefits of EU if they left. How will these people feel when they realise that they're going to need to join EEA which will mean the same level of immigration and less political power?
I've hard it said that Norway would easily be in the top EU countries when it comes to speedily and effectively implementing EU directives in law, if they qualified for the list. On the other hand, they remain outside the widely impopular agriculture system. Those things really highlight that "leave" in itself means nothing. Would the EU skeptics of the country be content if the UK only left the EU itself and remained with all the agreements?
I don't really understand the immigration situation. I know "uncontrolled EU migration" was the focal point of the leave campaign, but if the UK has not been part of the Schengen Area, then what controls did the UK lack?
Also, I thought the way immigration numbers were used in the debate was appalling. If I remember correctly:
- The UK deals with 300,000 immigrants per year, of which 50% from inside the EU.
- The immigration target set by the government was 20,000 per year.
- That means the UK government was already allowing 150,000 of non-EU migrants in the country. And for these migrants, the UK does have full control.
How come everyone in the UK accepted this rationale as a valid argument against the EU, instead of a failure of the UK government?
They had no control at all over EU migration, basically. They are not part of the Schengen Area, which means that they have their own visa regime (with respect to non-EU nationals), and they have systematic border controls (passport checks) at their borders (air, train and ferry terminals, since they don't have a Schengen-Area land border). The main content of the Schengen Agreement is the removal of systematic border controls.
The free movement of EU persons (and their families) holds in the whole EEA, independent of the Schengen Agreement. There are also EU rules about where refugees are settled, but the UK already had an opt-out from those.
The UK really has put themselves in a bad situation here. The main reason people voted to leave was immigration and to "take back power Brussels" and because they were convinced by the campaign that they could still get all the benefits of EU if they left. How will these people feel when they realise that they're going to need to join EEA which will mean the same level of immigration and less political power?