EUROPE’S finance chief has blown another hole in the economic arguments of Remoaners with a shock admission the bloc’s much-vaunted Single Market does not work well for countries like Britain.
Polish eurocrat Elżbieta Bieńkowska conceded that the common economic area, which is usually presented as Brussels’ crowning achievement, “does not function properly”.
Her comments were directed towards the services sector, which makes up 80 per cent of the British economy and accounts for around a third of all our exports to the continent.
And they will come as a hammer blow to europhile MPs trying to make the increasingly shaky economic case for shackling Britain to the struggling eurozone post-Brexit.
Announcing a raft of proposed reforms to the Single Market to boost the services sector, the £200,000 a year eurocrat said: ”Services represent two thirds of the EU economy and generate 90 per cent of new jobs.
“But the Single Market – this jewel that is all too often taken for granted – does not function properly for services.
“As a result, we miss out on important potential for jobs and growth.”
And Brussels Vice-President Jyrki Katainen, who is responsible for jobs and economic growth, admitted: "Barriers to trade in services are also barriers to competitiveness.
“Making better use of the Single Market for Services will help European businesses create jobs and grow across borders, offering a wider choice of services at better prices, while maintaining high standards for consumers and workers.”
The UK has run a trade surplus with the EU in services for every year since 2005, with Britain exporting £15.4billion more to the continent than it imported in 2014.
In contrast our trade deficit with the rest of Europe in terms of goods, which make up two-thirds of cross-Channel commercial activity, stands at a whopping £77bn a year.
And it is the claimed threat of damage to the service industry, including financial services and hospitality, which has led the political charge for a ‘soft’ Brexit keeping the UK in the Single Market.
As part of its proposed reforms, Brussels wants to smooth out administrative issues which face services companies trading across borders and remove “overly burdensome or outdated requirements on professionals” moving around the EU.
The revelations come after Scottish leader Nicola Sturgeon was slapped down by Norwegian politicians over her plot to keep Scotland inside the Single Market even if the rest of the UK opts to leave.
Last month the SNP chief published a much-derided plan to maintain her country’s EU membership no matter what, proposing that Edinburgh would sign-up to a ‘Norway-style’ deal on its own.
But her plot has been strongly rebuffed by a number of leading European politicians already and yesterday the Norwegians said they could only consider an application from Scotland as an independent country.
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