Mountains to climb: exiting the EU won’t be as simple as people think
by Andrew Sentance
Telegraph.co.uk
In the debate about the UK’s membership of the European Union, some people look enviously at Switzerland and Norway. These are two countries that are not EU members but still have very close trading relationships with the rest of Europe. They are the leading members of the European Free Trade Area (EFTA) which Britain was part of in the 1960s, before joining the EEC in 1973.
Switzerland and Norway are also very affluent countries. According to the IMF, Swiss GDP per head is 40pc higher than the UK and in Norway it is 64pc higher. If these other countries can sustain a high standard of living outside the EU, perhaps Britain can do the same.