LETTER : Obstacles to European free trade agreement with the US
Your support helps us to tell the story
From reproductive rights to climate change to Big Tech, The Independent is on the ground when the story is developing. Whether it's investigating the financials of Elon Musk's pro-Trump PAC or producing our latest documentary, 'The A Word', which shines a light on the American women fighting for reproductive rights, we know how important it is to parse out the facts from the messaging.
At such a critical moment in US history, we need reporters on the ground. Your donation allows us to keep sending journalists to speak to both sides of the story.
The Independent is trusted by Americans across the entire political spectrum. And unlike many other quality news outlets, we choose not to lock Americans out of our reporting and analysis with paywalls. We believe quality journalism should be available to everyone, paid for by those who can afford it.
Your support makes all the difference.From Mr Ernest Wistrich
Sir: The Foreign Secretary's championship of a North Atlantic free trade area at the Conservative Party conference, against the background of opposition to any further integration within the European Union, is doomed to failure.
The Conservative government tried this before in 1958 by urging the EEC to negotiate a free trade area with the newly formed Efta as an alternative to further European integration. This was rejected by the EEC then as a device to destroy the EEC's commitment to "an ever closer union of the European people", a phrase used in the Rome treaty to explain the objective of the EEC to proceed ultimately to full political and economic union. When Britain failed in that attempt, we decided to join the EEC and were ultimately admitted on the clear understanding that we accepted its political objectives.
The same commitment to ever closer union appears in the preamble of the Maastricht treaty to which Britain is a signatory. If we now refuse to go along with our partners towards political as well as economic union, we are certainly unlikely to persuade them to abandon it for the sake of a wider free trade area.
Our government should make a clear and honest choice. Either we carry out our commitment to further integration, implicit in the Maastricht treaty, or we decide to let the others go ahead without us by leaving the union and seeking a free trade association with it instead.
Yours faithfully,
Ernest Wistrich
London, NW3
11 October
Join our commenting forum
Join thought-provoking conversations, follow other Independent readers and see their replies
Comments