Brexit Red Lines Show It’s About More Than Money for East EU
- Free movement deemed ‘best result’ of EU by 11 eastern members
- EU funds seen as source of graft even as they boost economies
An employee prepares to throw ropes to the dockside from onboard the Luna Maersk container ship, operated by A.P. Moeller-Maersk A/S, at the Port of Felixstowe Ltd., a subsidiary of CK Hutchison Holdings Ltd., in Felixstowe, U.K., on Tuesday, Feb. 2, 2016. A vote to leave the EU could force the Bank of England to keep interest rates at a record low for an 'extended period of time' or even lower them to shore up the economy as Britain ends its 43-year membership in a 500 million-person bloc that buys almost half its exports.
Photographer: Chris Ratcliffe/BloombergAs European governments stake out positions for talks that will shape the continent’s post-Brexit future, their priorities offer a glimpse into the wiring that holds together the world’s biggest trading bloc.
For the former Communist east, where 11 countries have joined the European Union since 2004, the deal breaker is the free movement of labor. While richer nations pour billions of euros into the economies of their neighbors to help them catch up, opinion polls show that for the more than 100 million people who live in the area that stretches from the Baltic to the Black Sea, the ability to live and work anywhere in the EU outweighs all other aspects of membership.