“…and these rules have to be adhered to by EU law in each country.”
Yeah, right. All nations stick rigidly to the rules, don’t they?
A million people have arrived in the EU as migrants this year (at least, that’s the number we know about). How are those people going to be denied the rights of all other EU citizens to move about as they wish? Even if they are not granted full citizenship (and I doubt very much that they will be denied for too long, regardless of the “rules”) they can still roam the Schengen Area and settle where they wish. The idea that a million people (and rising) can somehow be contained where they are “allocated” is utter lunacy.
Sorry Eddie but I must disagree with some of your points.
“We will NOT be allowed to send them back, the French are very firm on that point…”
The French will have no say in the matter. International law on illegal entrants is quite clear. They can be returned to their last port of call forthwith. Those arriving from Calais have no right to claim asylum in the UK. They lost it when they failed to present themselves to the authorities in the first safe country they arrived in. All it needs is for the UK to enforce the rules (which are the UN's rules and nothing to do with the EU). In any case the 2003 Le Touquet Agreement (for ferries) and the 1991 Sangatte Protocol (for trains) allow for juxtapositioning of immigration facilities in the UK and France on the cross channel routes and these agreements are not dependent upon our membership of the EU. It is doubtful that France would unilaterally tear up these agreements should we leave.
“…there will still be entry rights for European residents just as there were before we joined the Common Market”
Of course there will. The difference will be that we can turn people from other EU nations away if we wish. At present we cannot.
“…we are better off in and changing it from the inside than trying to change it from the outside. “
The biggest misconception of all. Been there, tried it (and still trying) and got sent away. The EU has no intention whatsoever of changing in any meaningful way. It is committed to ever closer political union and its policies will eventually see the end of individual nations. Even gaining dispensation from that stated aim has been largely rejected.
“We need to ensure that the UK is at the very heart of EU policy making to ensure that we get the best possible outcome for ourselves…”
The second biggest misconception. Between 2009 and 2014, 1936 votes were held in the European Parliament, and 576 of them were opposed by a majority of the UK’s 73 elected representatives. But of those, 485 were still passed – meaning the view of Britain being outvoted in 86 per cent of cases. This rises to 98 per cent in votes that cover budgets, and 92 per cent on constitutional and inter-institutional affairs.
The fact is that the interests of the UK and those of many of the other 27 EU nations are so diverse that this is inevitable. Couple this with the fact that the UK is one of the most underrepresented by head of population, under a system designed to increase the clout of small nations. There is one MEP for every 880,000 British voters, compared to one for every 70,900 Maltese. The EU average is one MEP for 486,000 voters. Only French voters are more underrepresented. British MEPs must either toe the line of large pan-european alliances that are committed to further political union or fruitlessly vote against legislation that they are unable to block. The UK has virtually no influence within the EU. Far from being “at the heart of policy making” it is being increasingly sidelined as those nations seeking ever closer union forge ahead by constantly outvoting our MEPs to secure their aims.