What exactly would the UK need to do to rejoin the EU?
I remember there was discussion that would be difficult, but I don’t remember exactly why. I also remember the UK originally actually had an exception to keep the Pound instead of the Euro. Would that still be on the table to rejoin?
Notionally every EU member state agrees to a direction of travel towards euro membership (only pre-Maastricht Treaty members were able to negotiate formal opt outs). If the UK rejoined then in principle it could try to renegotiate the old opt out as part of the accession talks.
But in practice it’s purely symbolic - plenty of newer EU member states like Poland are signed up to hypothetically one day joining the euro but their governments are making no effort to do anything about this and nobody is able to compel them otherwise (or cares). There’s good reason to imagine that France wouldn’t want the UK in the euro anyway (since the French tend to view the euro through mercantilist eyes, as a means to drive financial services business from London to Paris).
What exactly would the UK need to do to rejoin the EU?
I remember there was discussion that would be difficult, but I don’t remember exactly why. I also remember the UK originally actually had an exception to keep the Pound instead of the Euro. Would that still be on the table to rejoin?
Notionally every EU member state agrees to a direction of travel towards euro membership (only pre-Maastricht Treaty members were able to negotiate formal opt outs). If the UK rejoined then in principle it could try to renegotiate the old opt out as part of the accession talks.
But in practice it’s purely symbolic - plenty of newer EU member states like Poland are signed up to hypothetically one day joining the euro but their governments are making no effort to do anything about this and nobody is able to compel them otherwise (or cares). There’s good reason to imagine that France wouldn’t want the UK in the euro anyway (since the French tend to view the euro through mercantilist eyes, as a means to drive financial services business from London to Paris).