The government has published their Future Partnership paper on Science and innovation (HERE) and like some of the earlier ones it is a treatise on cherry picking. We want to leave the EU but participate in most of the EU institutions. Reading this particular paper one cannot help but be struck by the tone of nostalgia -as Barnier might put it - for membership. Listen to some of the quotes from the paper.
- In this spirit of continued partnership, this paper outlines the UK’s objectives for an ambitious science and innovation agreement with the EU.
- The UK is a top five collaboration partner for each of the other 27 Member States, and contributed almost 20 per cent of the total research work carried out within EU health programmes between 2007 and 2016.
- The UK and the EU share common fundamental challenges such as dealing with climate change, tackling infectious diseases in people, animals and plants, maintaining growth and security in the face of threats and natural hazards, and supporting developing countries to build societal and economic resilience.
- It is the UK’s ambition to build on its uniquely close relationship with the EU, so that collaboration on science and innovation is not only maintained, but strengthened.
- The UK and the EU start from a position of close regulatory alignment, trust in one another’s institutions, and a spirit of cooperation stretching back decades.
This is the conundrum the EU face. A member wants to leave the EU because they disagree with it's institutions and aims and believe it's corrupt and undemocratic. But they also want to continue afterwards exactly as they did before in several areas. In other words the member wants to cherry pick. According to the BBC (HERE) the UK received £3 billion more from the EU in science funding than we paid in between 2007 and 2013. We say close research links with the EU post Brexit are 'negotiable' apparently forgetting that we are leaving and have no say over whether or not they will allow us to have any close links at all.
If they do, you can bet we will not be £500 million a year to the good but we will have to pay a similar amount in to the budget. So that's another billion gone,
InFacts has a piece on it yesterday (HERE)
