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Comment by MatthiasP | Hacker News Reader

The desire for a trade war with the UK is not exactly high on the continent, especially considering the debt crisis is still looming over Brussels.

The UK will probably get a deal like Norway and will be better off without Brussels.

But then many other EU countries will ask: Who actually needs the political union?

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> The UK will probably get a deal like Norway and will be better off without Brussels.

EEA membership (which is what Norway has) includes:

* Freedom of movement.

* Contributions to the EU budget.

* Implementing most EU regulations without actually having representation in the bodies that decide them.

This would not go over well with Leave voters and would basically be a worse deal for the UK than remaining in the EU would be.

The UK won't get a deal like Norway because UK politics prohibits it; it's not politically acceptable to continue to send billions to the EU after leaving. If UK were to contribute as much to the EU as Norway per capita, it would be over 2 billion EUR per year.

They also have higher per-capita immigration from the EU, which is apparently also a political no-no for the UK.

I don't know where you get your information from with regard to the desire for a trade war. It is wishful thinking at best. The UK will not come to any settlement within the allotted time frame with the EU and will have to accept default terms if they want to continue trading. I don't think we can underestimate the enmity that already exists because of Brexit. There will be a huge payback for this. What is left of the UK will have a huge hostile super-power right on its doorstep.

"Brussels" is not in debt.

The monetary union has serious problems, but not all the countries in the EU are part of it.

Most of the countries in the EU are in the Eurozone too. The UK is pretty much the last major economy in the EU that's outside the Eurozone, and one of only two EU members that are not in theory obliged to join it as soon as they're able to.

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