Brexit discussion thread XI (Please read OP before posting)

Land of unicorns update.

This made me laugh, Lance Forman reckons 6 days is plenty of time to negotiate a free trade deal and that no deal is the best deal for the UK/Ireland/EU, bless him he even made the trip to the WTO in Geneva to find out some info.

https://twitter.com/LanceForman/status/1187817256740446209?s=19

Expect that Tweet to vanish anytime.

Back to the real world.

Hummm:-

https://twitter.com/adamparsons/status/1187828807513890819?s=19

Which Government (France perhaps?) and why?

SeaBreezes wrote: »

I would be interested in the flaws... I've heard a lot of untruths about the problem with the EU but I imagine posters such as yourselves have your homework done and I'm genuinely curious. What are these disadvantages?

The one size fits all (really just Germany and France) monetary policy.
The Strasbourg parliament
The low/no salary taxes of EU staff wages. They do have a community tax but it's nowhere near the level of taxation in the Member States.
The failure in policy that lead to Dieselgate

MrMusician18 wrote: »

The one size fits all (really just Germany and France) monetary policy.
The Strasbourg parliament
The low/no salary taxes of EU staff wages. They do have a community tax but it's nowhere near the level of taxation in the Member States.
The failure in policy that lead to Dieselgate

The EU Commission and European Parliament has only around 40,000 employees in total - reading the Telegraph and Express, you would think the figure is ten times that number.

The UK civil service by comparison has 425,000 employees.

Strazdas wrote: »

The EU Commission and European Parliament has only around 40,000 employees in total - reading the Telegraph and Express, you would think the figure is ten times that number.

The UK civil service by comparison has 425,000 employees.

So their few number should make them exempt from normal taxation? Entry level for graduates into the EU civil service is AD5, and that has take home pay of €46,800 + allowances. To put that in context, you'd have to earning almost €70k in Ireland for that kind of salary.

P Flynn was right, it's a well paid job.

MrMusician18 wrote:

P Flynn was right, it's a well paid job.

What's your problem - did you not get one?

Your list of objections to the EU are noted; people can make up their own minds if they are too high a price to pay for peace, prosperity and the most advanced societies on the planet.

prawnsambo wrote: »

Your 'entry level' is not some wet behind the ears clerical officer tbf.

They're not geniuses either, that justifies a salary of the equivalent the Irish AP grade.

And yeah, these people are wet behind the ears. Clerical officers in the commission (AST/SC1) start on about €38k equivalent Irish salary, minimum entry education requirement one year post secondary education diploma.

AD5 is graduate entry, pretty wet imo. What is it we think they do that means they deserve such enormous salaries? And up until about 2008 they paid no tax at all!

What I find interesting is that there is no response here to this justified criticism of the EU and all that regular posters like First Up have are ad homiem attacks.

I really don't see any issue with EU staff pay and the special tax arrangements, fair play to them. Anyone who thinks otherwise it could be argued is a begrudger.

Yes EU staff don't pay normal incomel tax like the rest of us, but, they are subject to other national taxes such as VAT etc, they do pay a special Community Income Tax, this is a progressive tax which ranges between 8% and 45%, the average EU staff member pays between 12% and 25% tax. This is all provided for under the Protocol on the Privileges and Immunities of the European Communities.

There are also other deductions, for example they pay what is known as a Solidarity Levy of either 6% or 7% depending on grade, they pay a 10% pension levy, they pay a 1.7% health insurance levy, they pay a 0.1% accident insurance levy, they pay a 0.18% unemployment protection levy etc, but it is equally important to note that EU workers do receive other well paid bonuses, but their marginal tax rate can often rise above 50%.

GM228 wrote: »

I really don't see any issue with EU staff pay and the special tax arrangements, fair play to them. Anyone who thinks otherwise it could be argued is a begrudger.

Yes EU staff don't pay normal incomel tax like the rest of us, but, they are subject to other national taxes such as VAT etc, they do pay a special Community Income Tax, this is a progressive tax which ranges between 8% and 45%, the average EU staff member pays between 12% and 25% tax. This is all provided for under the Protocol on the Privileges and Immunities of the European Communities.

There are also other deductions, for example they pay what is known as a Solidarity Levy of either 6% or 7% depending on grade, they pay a 10% pension levy, they pay a 1.7% health insurance levy, they pay a 0.1% accident insurance levy, they pay a 0.18% unemployment protection levy etc, but it is equally important to note that EU workers do receive other well paid bonuses, but their marginal tax rate can often rise above 50%.

The salaries I quoted considered all that, as there are European salary calculators that will calculate a net salary. The numbers I quite don't include allowances. I just don't think the salary levels within the commission are justified (JCJ and Tusk lift a cool €215k/yr net) and not just at the top but at all levels. When it's the ordinary worker that funds this largesse and especially when austerity is being dictated by a commission that will never experience it, it is hard to stomach.

Pointing this out is not about begrudgery either. It's about fairness and real solidarity, and in the context of EU salaries and allowances 7% is a pittance.

Anyway, this is all beside the point, it just illustrates that no criticism of the EU, valid or not is not welcome here. How can one have a fair debate when there is not even a semblance of trying to understand an opposing view on Europe, and I say that as someone who is quite pro European (I was even a federalist at one point in my youth!). But at least I am not blinded to the waste, failures problems and issues in the project.

MrMusician18 wrote: »

The salaries I quoted considered all that, as there are European salary calculators that will calculate a net salary. The numbers I quite don't include allowances. I just don't think the salary levels within the commission are justified (JCJ and Tusk lift a cool €215k/yr net) and not just at the top but at all levels. When it's the ordinary worker that funds this largesse and especially when austerity is being dictated by a commission that will never experience it, it is hard to stomach.

Pointing this out is not about begrudgery either. It's about fairness and real solidarity, and in the context of EU salaries and allowances 7% is a pittance.

JCJ and Tusk are consummate professionals who would walk into an MNC or Oil/gas major and earn ten times that, we should be thanking our lucky stars their ilk have half a moral compass and actually want to do work that benefits people.

All EU employees need to be fluent in at least two EU languages, so comparisons with the Irish/British are moot, it's not other countries fault that they have a much better mastery of languages than we do. The aptitude and scenario testing is also very stringent if you want to work in a role with any kind of influence, comparing it to entry level paper pushers is ridiculous. The majority of that 40k would get jobs in industry with better pay, this isn't the post office.

MrMusician18 wrote: »

In 2014, Jeroen Dijsselbloem, at the time Dutch Minister of Finance, described Juncker in an interview as a "heavy smoker and drinker". So yeah...

Anyway, I know two people in the commission and they have told me that the people in there are, in their opinion, are not any better than you'd find in a policy unit in a typical Irish department (which one came from). The work is relatively mundane consisting of analysing existing and proposing new policy. There are the pencil pushers and coasters too there of course.

Irish counts as a second language.

Tusk and Barnier are light years ahead of anyone in the UK cabinet (including Johnson) in terms of intelligence, sophistication, expertise and experience - even Richard Tice of the Brexit Party admitted this in a TV interview yesterday.

Professor Moriarty wrote: »

Arch Brexiteer Peter Bone agrees wholeheartedly that there should be a second referendum. He says it should have Johnson's Deal or No Deal on the ballot paper.

There's something bizarrely wrong with democracy if you are saying to 48% of voters that you are now forced to vote for only choices being dictated to you.

Might as well go full on North Korea style where Kim wins 99% every election

MrMusician18 wrote: »

Pointing this out is not about begrudgery either. It's about fairness and real solidarity, and in the context of EU salaries and allowances 7% is a pittance.

Anyway, this is all beside the point, it just illustrates that no criticism of the EU, valid or not is not welcome here. How can one have a fair debate when there is not even a semblance of trying to understand an opposing view on Europe, and I say that as someone who is quite pro European (I was even a federalist at one point in my youth!). But at least I am not blinded to the waste, failures problems and issues in the project.

Your point is akin to having a tree growing in your garden for decades and because a few leaves fall on to your car windscreen, that you don't like criticism for suggesting the tree should be cut down.

Nobody has argued about the EU being perfect but that it needs constant change and which it has undergone over the decades.

Trying to make a point about EU staff salaries in the context of the reasons for Brexit simply isn't critical thinking.

MrMusician18 wrote: »

The one size fits all (really just Germany and France) monetary policy.

If the other Eurozone countries had agreed to reforms and had voted for much needed (maybe unpopular) financial policies, this would not have been any major problem.
The expectation by the Northern EU members of the Eurozone that the fiscal rules (60% max debt, 3% max deficit) would be followed as part of good governance turned out not to be true.

Just another example of the absolute necessity of good rules, regulations and controls.

Finland, the Baltic countries and Slovakia has shown good governance and been fairly OK with the Euro.

MrMusician18 wrote: »

The Strasbourg parliament

This dual parliament is due to a kind of French inferiority complex.

It came into the treaties when Denmark voted 'No' to Maastricht and got four opt-outs at the Council meeting late 1992 in Edinburgh. The French managed at the same meeting to get Strasbourg into future treaties.

It cost around € 900 mill/year or €2/EU27Citizen/year (~ 1£80p/year).

It is a sad state of affairs.
However it is not any large economic problem given the population size of the EU. There are currently much larger and much more urgent problem for the EU to focus on.

MrMusician18 wrote: »

The low/no salary taxes of EU staff wages. They do have a community tax but it's nowhere near the level of taxation in the Member States.

The salaries in EU are OK and very OK for people from some poorer countries. MEPs are taxed by an average 22% by the EU, but e.g. the Danish MEP are taxed by the Danish tax rules too. The tax paid to the EU is subtracted from the tax they have to pay to Denmark.
Nothing in EU rules prevents other member states to do the same (I believe many already do).

Good and fair salaries for EU civil servants and for the hardworking part of the MEPs is important to get the best people applying for an EU job or running for office (as MEP).
It is also important for being able to efficiently fight corruption and fraud.

MrMusician18 wrote: »

The failure in policy that lead to Dieselgate

The low fuel consumption and low CO2 emission from Diesel engines fooled politicians to support these engines in new cars. The politicians did not understand or didn't wanted to know that NOx (Nitrogen Oxides) and micro particles were much higher from these engines.

Lower taxation of these cars and in more EU countries of Diesel fuel too, was national policies first and EU coordination second.
They were helped by the new wave of very small cars with very small Diesel engines.

Lars

MrMusician18 wrote: »

In 2014, Jeroen Dijsselbloem, at the time Dutch Minister of Finance, described Juncker in an interview as a "heavy smoker and drinker". So yeah...

Anyway, I know two people in the commission and they have told me that the people in there are, in their opinion, are not any better than you'd find in a policy unit in a typical Irish department (which one came from). The work is relatively mundane consisting of analysing existing and proposing new policy. There are the pencil pushers and coasters too there of course.

Irish counts as a second language.

I'd imagine you need to demonstrate some level of proficiency?