blah blah blah blah...........
Lots of facts, figures, dates and personalities, but all that doesn't alter the fact
A very inelegant response there, tony, to my well researched and well supported comments. No attempt at a reasoned argument or sensible debate. Just a zoom off on a different trajectory, with absolutely nothing to explain or substantiate your opinion. But I'll respond, at least as much as I can from your ineloquent statement.
that with open borders, the EU is not safe from jihadists - that's the top and bottom of it.
Your statement is a wide and wild assertion about something which you fail to specifically address.
Are you referring to EU external borders being open? Clearly they are not. But the EU does tend to rely on the most external nations to create and maintain those external borders, such as Greece, and other Balkan states. Presently the EU makes no allowance in expenditure to those nations to maintain those external borders.
I'll come back to this point later.
Are you referring to EU internal open borders, as defined by the Schengen Agreement? Anyone who has travelled within Europe pre and post Schengen will appreciate the borderless crossings, (and the wide acceptance of the euro). It is not a situation that can not be fixed as and when required, as has been proved recently. Member nations can re-create those borders at any time as required. Additionally, the UK has had internal borderless crossings for hundreds of years. You can travel between England, Scotland, Wales, NI, Jersey etc without a passport. Although not all the borders are completely without checks.
Are you referring to UK external open borders? They are obviously not open, not to EU citizens or to anyone else. EU citizens are free to work, travel and live in UK, but the borders are real, manned, and validity checks are carried out.
Or are you referring to UK internal open borders, which as I've already explained has been like that for hundreds of years.
Now to come back to EU external borders: I fully agree that some EU member nations could do better, and for that, they may and should receive some funding and assistance.
The Remain in EU argument, so far has been a selfish: UK is better in EU. But, lets reverse that for a minute. UK is extremely good at some things, one of those is intelligence and border control. (Even the UK struggles, but we are one of the best, which demonstrates the difficulty.) There are many other areas where UK excels. EU is stronger, safer and better with UK as part of the system! We can assist in the areas that we excel. It makes us safer, stronger and it benefits the other EU member states.
Finally, I've probably said a few times, we are not free to do and act as we wish. BUT, we are free to act and do as we wish within the limits set down in legal frameworks, etc.
Now, what is the paradigm of free travel, as long as the legal requirements are accepted and recognised.
Surely the answer must be to have the ability to travel anywhere and everywhere, as one wishes. So to achieve the nearest that one hopes to achieve, within Europe is the freedom to travel, but maintaining the most stringent external border controls, that is possible.
This should be our objective: to maintain the external EU border control (recognising humanitarian needs) and allow free movement for the citizens of EU within Europe. That can be best achieved by being in EU and sharing data, intelligence, expertise and the financial burden.
