A small reminder of why we need to leave the EU

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Daniel Hannan

Daniel Hannan is a writer and journalist, and has been Conservative MEP for South East England since 1999. He speaks French and Spanish and loves Europe, but believes that the European Union is making its constituent nations poorer, less democratic and less free.






A small reminder of why we need to leave the EU




By Daniel HannanPoliticsLast updated: May 16th, 2013
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What's the most objectionable thing about the EU? The way it artificially redirects our commerce away from growing markets across the oceans? The openly anti-British financial services rules? The ecological catastrophe of the Common Fisheries Policy? The way the Brussels budget swallows up all our domestic austerity savings?
Bad as all these things are, I'd say the single worst feature of the EU is its anti-democratic nature. It suctions power away from elected national parliaments and then plops it into the laps of unaccountable Euro-agencies. The example I quote here is trivial, but is none the less symptomatic. How tragic that Europe, which taught the rest of the world what it means to be able to hire and fire the people who pass your laws, should so readily abandon that practice.