News
Good afternoon and welcome to your Unbound Daily Briefing for Monday 6th July - topics covered today include:
- EU Commission and Parliament Make Very Specific Statements on Membership Terms
- Guardian Publishes Opinion Piece on EU of Today
- European Commission Looks at Changing Accession Process, Adding Safeguards
EU Commission and Parliament Make Very Specific Statements on Membership Terms
Two separate posts on X/Twitter by two separate official EU accounts were posted over the weekend - both shattering the dreams and delusions of the rejoin activist movement that wishes to deny the need the UK to follow EU rules and EU laws as they are today if it were to ask to rejoin.
The first from the European Commission account, on the topic of acceding countries, outlined that the Copenhagen Criteria was a "a clear set of requirements every country must meet before joining the EU" (emphasis added). the second post, this time from the official European Parliament account, was focused on the failure of Turkey and Georgia to meet the accession criteria and so, in line with a press release published on 17th June, cannot proceed with EU accession until they do so.
Both of these posts, for different reasons, serve as an apt reminder to those who wish to rejoin - that the rules are not negotiable, and the British public didn't like them before, let alone now. Polling has consistently shown that the British public would not accept the terms of accession.
- Read the European Commission post on X, on the EU accession process
- Read the European Parliament post on X, on accession backsliding with Turkey and Georgia
- Read the European Commission website, on the terms of membership
Guardian Publishes Opinion Piece on EU of Today
The Guardian this morning has published an opinion piece by Mujtaba Rahman, which quite rightly highlights the gaping hole in the campaigning to rejoin the EU - namely that the EU the activists wish to rejoin no longer exists, and the one that replaced it is one that the UK would never actually want to join.
As outlined in the piece, Mr Rahman correctly states that the EU of 2026 "is more fiscally integrated, more interventionist, more geopolitical and, in many respects, markedly less British than the one it left", adding that "any serious rejoin debate must start from an honest assessment of what the EU has become" since we voted to leave.
It is the opinion of Britain Unbound that it was the correct decision to vote to leave in 2016, and it continues to be the correct decision to stay out in 2026. We intend to continue making that argument, the argument for retaining national sovereignty, for as long as the argument needs to be made.
- Read the Guardian article on "The EU we left no longer exists"
- Read our news item on the Opinium polling
- Read our news item on the Ipsos polling
- Read our article on the YouGov polling conducted for Britain Unbound
- Read our news item on the BMG polling
European Commission Looks at Changing Accession Process, Adding Safeguards
Euronews has this morning reported on the ever-growing unhappiness within the EU member states on the terms and approach to new member accession, and the response that the European Commission looks to make later this year. Member states are increasingly calling for additional safeguards to be put in place, to make sure that those who join live up to the commitments and obligations that they sign up to in the treaties, before any further members are allowed to join. The Commission is looking to retake the narrative on this front away from the rebelling member states, with Euronews reporting that the Commission will propose some changes later this year.
This news will be of further frustration to those campaigning to rejoin, as they frequently frame the obligations of the EU treaties as being able to be ignored by the UK should they happen to not like them - such as the obligation to adopt the Euro as currency.
This is of course a story that will have further developments, which Britain Unbound will keep an eye on.
