Examine the extent to which the benefits of UK membership in the Essay

Examine the extent to which the benefits of UK membership in the European Union outweigh the costs - Essay Example The UK’s contributions to the EU budget has got also fiscal consequences as the consumer prices get affected through the common Agricultural Policy and common external tariffs that are levied on imports.EU membership also can influence the foreigners’ decisions on whether to invest in the UK or not. Being able to understand the these economic impacts gives us a good framework to do an evaluation on the benefits and costs of EU membership, but provides no information on whether UK would be at a better position by staying outside EU.I n order to establish this we require a counterfactual scenario for cost-benefit purposes (Anderson, & Reichert, 2012, P.244). The United Kingdom becomes part of the world’s largest single market by being a member of the European Union. The single market is an economic zone that is larger than that of Japan and USA together with a GDP of around 11 trillion pounds. This single market that has over 500 million people gives a level ground for British business to trade in.This helps not only in enabling free trade with absence of customs duties or tariffs but also provides a common set of rules so that business need not to be in compliance with 27 different types of regulations. A research done by the European Commission indicates that the EU GDP was increased by 2.2%(233 million pounds) and there were 2.75 million job opportunities that created since the adoption of the single market between 1992 and 2006.The increase in GDP for UK was around 25 billion pounds. The Department of business of the government, skills & innovation gives an estimation that trade has increased between member states because of the single market (Baldwin, Francois, & Portes, 2013,P.125-147). The UK becomes part of the process for making rules and regulation in the single market for being a member of the EU.Britain through its council of ministers are given the opportunity