This may sound a bit ‘what have the romans every done for us’ but what exactly has it done? From where I’m standing the EU is a major pusher of globalisation and free markets.
A few points as per my understanding:
Making environmental legislation is hard, because it costs money usually, and when companies are forced to spend money on cleaning themselves up, they are less profitable which makes them less competitive. By binding countries together economically and reducing trade barriers between them, the EU ensures that members trade a lot with each other; then it ensures that they all follow the same environmental legislation. So they can’t undercut each other, and they are less likely to take their business elsewhere.
Take the example of Delphi, the fuel injector manufacturer mentioned way early in the thread. They can specialise in certain aspects of manufacturing, and partner with other specialists in other countries at little additional cost, and with less exposure to political changes such as trade wars. So a company in a particular company say, the heat-treatment place in Germany, has a very large market and can introduce economies of scale to do their stuff cheaper; likewise the injector manufacturer in the UK. This is why the US is such a powerful economy – companies are all bigger because the market is bigger. This is what’s been happening in the EU. Therefore our stuff is cheaper for us to buy, and cheaper (and hence more competitive) for overseas customers. This boosts our manufacturing sector and improves quality of life for our citizens.
These in theory allow the EU to perform better in the current global economic set-up, however that set-up isn’t necessarily the best. This sort of thing works well enough amongst equals, but where there’s inequality free trade can make things much worse.
