Rejoining the EU would benefit Wales

It is refreshing that Andy Burnham has come out in favour of rejoining the EU. I appreciate that he doesn’t skirt around the issue and is confident enough to present a strong argument.

In 2016, probably like most other EU citizens (I am originally Dutch), it took me a while to recover from the shock of the result. I lived then in a small village Scotland. It was hard to find anyone locally who thought Brexit was a good idea.

Local farmers heavily benefited from the single market, customs union, and farm payment schemes. Towns benefited from European tourists, workers, and students. Europeans helped rejuvenate local communities and balance out an aging and declining population. And in a deprived rural area, major investments—from sea defences to innovation centres that turned seaweed into biofuels—were all paid for by the EU through its structural funds.

The idea of leaving just seemed crazy.

In Wales, EU funds also played a major role in development. Before Brexit, Wales received more EU structural funding per person than any other region in the UK. EU funds paid for upgrading roads and improving broadband. The European Social Fund helped over 100,000 Welsh people gain qualifications and supported vulnerable groups such as the long-term unemployed and disabled.

These were the EU’s ‘levelling up’ policies. They have been spectacularly successful. For every euro spent on funding poorer regions, there was a 2.60 euro increase in regional income for those regions. And because of strong criteria for social inclusion, this money did not just go to those who were already well off.

The benefits have been clearest in central and eastern Europe. For example, when Poland joined the EU, its average income was 51% of the EU average. This has increased to 80%, driven by access to the single market and modernisation paid for by EU money. This effect is felt. In recent years, Poland has shifted from a net emigration to a net immigration country. People are moving back, particularly from the UK.

These developments benefit Britain also. Imagine if, after the fall of the Soviet bloc, that levelling up had failed. How many of those countries would have fallen under Putin’s influence by now, rather than becoming successful democracies?

In contrast, Brexit has wiped nearly £4 billion off Wales’ economy, according to the Welsh Centre for Public Policy. This is the result of a major drop in business investment, customs checks that have hit exports to the continent, and the loss of structural development funds and agricultural subsidies.

The replacement of structural funds by the UK government’s so-called Shared Prosperity Fund was an abject failure: less money and no clear strategy. There was more of one thing though: red tape. EU funds were allocated for multiple years, but UK funding had to be re-applied for annually. And instead of EU funds being managed by the Welsh government, funds became centralised in Westminster.

And leaving the EU didn’t cut red tape but doubled it for many businesses, because if you’re selling in both UK and EU markets, you must cope with two different sets of regulations.

Reform says that Brexit has never been ‘properly’ implemented, and if we just elect them, they will fix it. The problem is, we still haven’t withdrawn from pesky things like the European Court of Human Rights, or torn apart the Good Friday Agreement.

We haven’t gotten rid yet of all our environmental legislation, though we seem to be doing a pretty good job in polluting our rivers now we can’t be fined by the EU for that anymore.

We still haven’t put gunboats in the Channel to shoot at anyone who doesn’t speak English, nor have we completely deregulated the City, introduced the death penalty, sided with Russia in the Ukraine war, or made the Bank of England accept Nigel Farage’s favourite cryptocurrencies. And we still haven’t outlawed dangerously woke practices that go against British values like unisex toilets and breastfeeding in public places (Nige’s fav cultural obsession).

We did introduce a bit more flexibility in rules around the shape of bananas though.

The fundamental problem with Brexit, apart from the politics, is that we are, believe it or not, in Europe. We can’t change much more than the curvature of bananas, because if we want to import or export anything else it will most likely cross the Channel, and so we will have to agree some things about that with our neighbours.

This is why Norway and Switzerland are EU members in almost all but name. This is why Theresa May, Boris Johnson, Rishi Sunak, and all those Tory ministers who have defected to Reform, could never really ‘get Brexit done’. Brexit was bound to fail because the idea of taking us out of Europe is a fantasy.

And there’s another fundamental reason why rejoining the EU would benefit Wales: so many of our key issues are better dealt with either at a Welsh scale or a European one, rather than at the UK scale.

At the global scale, the UK can’t do anything without its European partners. The UK can’t deal with unholy alliances between Trump, Putin, and Xi on its own. Standing up to billionaires and tech bosses, Westminster just doesn’t have the power or clout. Making AI safe and dealing with climate change? We have outstanding universities, diplomats, and negotiators, but they work much more effectively within the EU than outside of it.

At the Welsh scale, from rail franchising to renewable energy, there is a strong case for devolution.

In terms of immigration, UK policies have also harmed Wales. In Welsh rural areas, not immigration but emigration, particularly of young people, has been the problem. Post-Brexit, the number of EU students at UK universities dropped by around 60%. This has been devastating for universities like Aberystwyth.

Reintroducing freedom of movement and access to the single market and EU structural funds would give an immediate boost to Welsh economies and communities.

Would it be fair to have another referendum? Yes.

At the time, younger people were much less likely to vote Leave. A decade on, many people who held on to a pre-EU British national identity have passed away.

By this point, 55 to 60% of people support rejoining the EU, with only 35-40% opposing. Maybe this explains why Andy Burnham is now speaking so freely about rejoining. It’s become a political no-brainer.

The author is Professorial Research Fellow at Aberystwyth University and a One Spirit Interfaith Minister.