Let us out!
Good news: the 30th annual British Social Attitudes survey reported, “Euroscepticism is firmly in the ascendancy, with a record 67 per cent wanting either to leave or for Britain to remain but the EU to become less powerful.”
Dutch oppose opening labour market
According to a recent poll, 81 per cent of Dutch citizens oppose the opening of the Dutch labour market to Bulgarians and Romanians from 1 January 2014.
Social affairs minister Lodewijk Asscher agreed eastern European workers threaten the jobs of Dutch workers as they are willing to work for less than the minimum wage. He said the government will address the “negative consequences ”of intra-EU migration. That won’t go as far as closing the country’s borders to those migrants, which would not be permitted by the EU.
According to the 2011 census, Bulgaria has lost 582,000 people over the past ten years and 1.5 million of its population since 1985, a depopulation record not just for the EU, but also by world standards. It now has almost the same number of inhabitants as in 1945.
Crisis zone
Economic news in EU member states continues to reflect serious problems. In Greece, unemployment in the 15-24 age group reached 58.8 per cent, an unimaginable figure in any European country until recently. In France the government announced spending cuts of nearly 15 billion euros in response to lower growth forecasts.
Is that a promise?
The two co-chief executives of Goldman Sachs International have said banks will move to the Continent from London “in very short order” if Britain exits the EU. No more Goldman Sachs – another great argument for leaving the EU.
Sadly, it’s probably a bluff. If Goldman Sachs moved its offices any distance away from the Stock Exchange, that would make its traders’ electronic transmissions take longer, losing it a competitive advantage. ■