The announcement is talking about EEA rather than EU though, which smells a bit weird. I'm not sure what regulation they're trying to resolve the conflict with that is not EU wide but rather EEA and targets the usage of default browsers.
The EEA is practically “EU + a handful of countries that apply EU rules but don’t get to participate in decision making for historical reasons”.
That’s why Britain didn’t even consider joining the EEA after they left the Union. From their point of view, it would still be the regulatory burden of EU membership without most of the benefits they enjoyed as a full member. When they’d decided to take the economic impact of leaving the free trade area, it wouldn’t really make sense to stay on worse terms than they already had.
EEA still has the four freedoms which was not acceptable to the UK.
A smart person who has read up on EU/UK and some European migration situations will note that migration to e.g: Denmark/Switzerland is still difficult despite being part of those four freedoms. This is because they bothered to mitigate migration within the parameters of the law; since the right to work under EU's four freedoms only applies for 6 months.
But tariff free trade for goods benefits the EU more as the UK service sector is bigger than their goods sector. UK services companies (especially regulated services like finance, law, etc) are at a disadvantage to EU companies because the UK companies don't have equivalency (i.e. the either need extra checks (costs) to operate in the EU, or need to open a corporate office in the EU).
And, the UK recently decided to forgo their UKCA mark to replace the CE mark as it would cost UK businesses too much to support both.
And lastly the UK has yet to impose sanitary and phyto-sanitary rules on imports into the UK because it would cost consumers in the UK too much (UK food inflation is still higher than just about all EU countries even without the checks). But the EU does impose sanitary and phyto-sanitary checks on food imports to the EU from the UK. So, in net the EU benefits from this as well.
So in balance the UK doesn't benefit. And it's a huge deal.
I don’t anyone here is arguing that leaving the single market was a great idea. Rather that it doesn’t make much sense to stay in it if you want to leave the EU.
That was my exact point; it's somewhat more expensive to import food into the UK now because of Brexit. And far more expensive to export (in relative terms to EU sourced food in the EU).
I phrased my previous comment wrong (and should edit it). There’s of course a benefit to adopting the regulations and following the rules — you get to participate in the free trade area. But without a say in how those regulations and rules are formed.
It’s strictly the regulatory burden of EU membership without any of the benefits of the club.
That's not really true if you are living in one of those countries (I live in one of those countries). In general, we get the protections that the EU gives its people and I get free travel within the zone. Lots of little things like my phone working without outrageous charges when I travel to most places here, too.
Liechtenstein, Norway and Iceland are EEA members, and roaming is fine for those.
Switzerland has its own arrangement, and the roaming deal doesn't apply.
Andorra, Monaco, the United Kingdom, the Faroe Islands, Bosnia, Serbia, Kosovo, Montenegro, Belarus, Russia, North Macedonia, Ukraine and Moldova are not in the EU or EEA.
Well, you could plausibly argue right this moment that those strict regulatory burdens are a benefit of the club - since in this case they're benefiting from those regulations curbing abuse from international companies
Something which almost certainly wouldn't happen if they passed these laws by themselves, rather than as part of a much larger economic area.
But otherwise... I mostly agree with you. Lots of laws, not much representation.
The regulatory "burden" is also a benefit, in general, which a lot of people fail to understand and is also the reason Brexit Britain hasn't significantly diverged from EU rules.
Yes, it's hard to explain to people just how much of a saving being in the EU makes on regulations. It outweighs having the odd regulation that you don't agree with. If the UK does move away from EU regulations then they'll have to duplicate a lot of effort.
It's because people also think of directives, which are the EU thing of "do this, but write all your own slightly different laws." All the EU stuff in total is not as useful as you're making it sound. It's getting better now, but it's taking a long time.
And the UK follows EU regulations anyway, by not controlling imports (latest climbdown, delayed food checks until 2024, 5th time of delaying) and indefinitely accepting CE certification mark (meant to be superseded in the UK by UKCA).
True, but in this case I suspect that since the UK isn't n the EEA then MS Windows won't honour the user browser settings in the UK (even if the UK voluntarily follows some EEA / EU laws).
