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Comment by racktash | Hacker News Reader

Even as a (still!) pro-remainer/pro-EU UK citizen, comments like this always sound a little gleeful to me.

The Euro is not a requirement (obviously) of being in the EU. If the sovereign UK or sovereign Ukraine or sovereign Sweden (or Norway, or wherever) want to acquire/retain EU membership but don't want to adopt the Euro, then that's absolutely their right.

The EU is a wonderful (and of course imperfect) organisation because it is democratic, because it's a voluntary association of democratic states. Yes, being a member has some basic requirements (like upholding rule of law), but let's not pretend it has to be all or nothing.

The UK will I suspect one day rejoin the EU, and when it does, it will be two mature political entities coming to a mutually beneficial agreement.

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> If the sovereign UK or sovereign Ukraine or sovereign Sweden (or Norway, or wherever) want to acquire/retain EU membership but don't want to adopt the Euro, then that's absolutely their right.

Likewise the EU gets to say "The Euro is a condition of joining, if you don't want to switch currency stop asking to join".

The UK may or may not be able to give the EU a reason to let them in without signing up to join the Euro, but given the current lot I doubt it.

> The UK will I suspect one day rejoin the EU, and when it does, it will be two mature political entities coming to a mutually beneficial agreement.

For it to be only two, that will take a while. Right now it's 27 member states and the EU as a collective entity on one side and the UK as another; this isn't like the USA where nobody negotiates with just Massachusetts on customs, border controls, and which court oversees trade disputes, but instead goes to just DC and they decide for everyone else.

> The Euro is not a requirement (obviously) of being in the EU.

They negotiated an opt-out. That's likely to be much tougher if there's a second go around.

https://eur-lex.europa.eu/EN/legal-content/summary/united-ki...

> When the Maastricht Treaty was concluded in 1992, the United Kingdom was granted an opt-out clause, meaning that it was not required to participate in the third stage of economic and monetary union (EMU) and consequently introduce the euro.

Yes, therefore it is not required (by this I mean one can be within the EU without being in the Eurozone, whatever the treaty details) – just like Sweden continues to be productively within the union while retaining its own currency.

The customisable membership (and again, certain core principles cannot be customised of course) is a strength of the EU.

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