Economic impact of EU always been marginal

Phil Jones of the federalist European Movement persists with the mistaken idea that EU membership has brought vital economic benefits to the UK (Viewpoint, January 30).

Well, on page 13 of his 2012 report entitled ‘20 years of the European single market’, Michel Barnier, now the EU chief negotiator, wrote: “EU27 GDP in 2008 was 2.13 per cent or €233 billion higher than it would have been if the Single Market had not been launched in 1992.”

But according to data from the Office for National Statistics, the UK economy grew by no less than twenty-six times that paltry 2.13 per cent, over 55 per cent, during the same period, which was an average growth rate of 2.8 per cent each year.

Similarly the trend growth rate of the UK economy from 1948 up to 2018 has been 2.6 per cent a year, with the average rate before we joined the EEC or Common

Market in 1973 actually running higher, at 3.3 per cent, than since we joined, only 2.2 per cent a year.

And although the UK growth rate has been somewhat lower in recent years the economy has still grown by about 4.5 per cent since the EU referendum in June 2016,

more than twice the one-off GDP boost from the creation of the EU Single Market which is claimed by the EU Commission, and despite all the predictions of economic disaster if we dared to vote to leave the EU.

It should also be said that the GDP benefit claimed by the EU is an average gross benefit across the EU, and the gross benefit obtained by the UK has been well below that average, and moreover even that has been offset by the high costs of the Single Market.

EU supporters in the UK have always felt it necessary to greatly exaggerate its economic impact, when it has never been more than marginal and most likely marginally negative.

Dr D R COOPER

Belmont Park Avenue

Maidenhead