This year marks 10 years since the UK voted to leave the EU. The process is often called Brexit, which is a combination of the words “Britain” and “exit”. After the referendum, there were a lot of issues to work through to try to make the UK’s departure smoother. Then the process was delayed even further because it took time for the UK Parliament to agree on a final Brexit deal, which contained rules for how the relationship between the UK and the EU would work after Brexit. The UK officially left the EU on 31 January 2020. Before the 2016 referendum and in the years since, there have been many debates about the positives and negatives of leaving the EU. Ten years on from Brexit, what’s your view – should the UK rejoin?
Yes – The EU provides certain freedoms
Rejoining the EU would mean rejoining something called the European single market. This has certain advantages, and one of them is that people in EU countries have the freedom to live and work in other EU countries without needing a lot of paperwork such as visas. It also allows goods to move freely between EU countries – so leaving it has had a negative impact on some trade. Sue Judd, who runs a UK business that sells dinosaur toys, told the Financial Post that, after Brexit, there had been “a lot more cost and a lot more paperwork”. Brexit was supposed to give the UK more control over its own laws but, according to Joël Reland, from King’s College London, the UK has actually “done little” to move away from EU laws.
No – The UK can be more independent
Since Brexit, the UK has been able to agree its own trade deals, including with Australia, New Zealand and India. The EU makes trade deals with the rest of the world on behalf of all of its member countries together; plus, although it hasn’t changed all of them, the UK has changed some of the rules and laws that it had to follow when it was part of the EU. For example, last year Parliament approved a law designed to stop the smuggling of puppies and kittens into the UK. Besides, rejoining isn’t that simple. Catherine Barnard, a professor at the University of Cambridge, England, told Time magazine that getting approval from all EU member countries to let the UK back in (which is required) could be tricky.