Anyways, happily the regulations required for doing so and getting a CE mark on your product are harmonised across Europe, so a device fit for sale in the UK is automatically good for sale anywhere in the EU and EEA, and even a few places beyond that which trade with the EU.

These regulations are implemented via EU directives, the aims of which are incredibly noble; rather than having to conform to regulations in every country you want to go to market in, you need only comply in your own country, and you comply everywhere in Europe.

Now for this system to work, it’s necessary for every country to transpose the directives into national law, as is the process for all EU directives. In the UK, these directives are implemented as part of a Consumer Safety Act, and policed by several bodies, including Trading Standards, the Health and Safety Executive, and the Medical and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency.

So for the aim of these regulations to succeed, that is, make it easier for business to work in Europe, EU law must form part of National law; some part of our sovereignty must be ceded to the EU. In return, we take part in the political structure that then forms those regulations, we elect our MEPs, we help write the constitution Lisbon treaty, we get the (formerly) rotating Presidency for a few months, etc.

If we pulled out of this political structure, we’d just end up receiving the same regulations, but without any say in how they are written. This would not be an improvement. Pulling out of the economic harmonisation endeavour entirely would be both stupid and pointless; all having an entirely seperate British regulatory system would do is force businesses to go through red-tape twice if they want to export to Europe.

Basically, the upshot here is that UKIP , the BNP and eurosceptic Conservatives are basically retarded. The goal of helping our businesses through economic harmonisation necessarily entails a corresponding political harmonisation. You cannot have one without the other, and our current way of stubbornly denying this fact is entirely mad.

Instead of a reasonable framework in which laws passed in Europe just apply in the UK we have a ridiculous process of transposition of directives, instead of a proper constitution we have a treaty that crudely patches together all the existing treaties, etc. It’s silly, and based on nothing more than the essentially odd idea of nationalism; the loyalty to whichever strip of land you happen to be born on, rather than on something more important like values and ideals.

I guess I’ve made a firm decision that a properly federal Europe is a good idea, for reasons with a little more substance than naïve idealism.