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Britain would not get a better deal on trade or financial services by voting to leave the EU, the UK’s European commissioner, Jonathan Hill, has said.
In one of his strongest interventions yet in the EU referendum debate, Lord Hill said nobody voting to leave the European Union should expect the UK to get improved terms.
“If for different reasons you want to leave that is perfectly proper, but don’t believe there is such a thing as a free lunch, that you can have your cake and eat it,” he told the Guardian and two other European newspapers. “Sorting things out will take a very long time; it will be uncertain.” [...]
“What some people are saying in the UK is: ‘Look, you can leave and it is all really, really easy and all those other Europeans need us more than we need them,’” he said.
But he questioned why other EU member states would want to give Britain a better deal, especially when their financial sectors were very different. Countries such as France and Germany would use Brexit to take competitive advantage – “clearly you would” – but also have different attitudes towards financial regulation.
Either Britain would have to accept all EU rules without influencing them, he said, or accept the status of a third country and go through an “uncertain” procedure to gain access to European markets.