Euro Area

[Kralizec]

It's a pretty meaningless comparison. Norway is like Saudi Arabia in that they're sparsely populated and sit on a ton of natural recources; except Norway is colder and a bit less conservative. Luxembourg is an EMU member and does better than anyone, but is likewise poor comparison material for obvious reasons. France and Germany, which are more comparable, also outperform the UK in terms of economic output.

It's a simple point - a transfer of sovereignty from a National Government to a third party should be ratified by the electorate. We keep electing Politicians who say "no more Europe" but it seems once in office any politician is faced with an edifice so constructed that you cannot extricate yourself from it.

I recall a German Europhile once telling me that were Britain to leave the EU we would be punished, that economic sanctions would be inflicted.

I disagree. But let me preface that with stating that I think "transferring sovereignty" is a bit of a misnomer. Sovereignty is universally understood to hold supreme power, on paper and actual, over your territory. Compartamentalizing sovereignty and transferring bits of it is a logical impossibility. What's happened is that the member states have delegated bits of decision making to the EU, and under EU law they're no longer competent to make act in those areas themselves.
The crucial point is that member states are in the EU voluntarily, and could leave if they want. The possibility is explicitly mentioned in the Lisbon treaty, but hypothetically if anyone wanted to leave they could have done so at any time. In contrast, regions like Wales or Catalonia are not sovereign entities and if they unilaterally declared themselves independant there'd be significant rucus (and the UK and Spain have the means to deal with it, unlike the EU even if it was interested in forcefully keeping members in the fold)

Ireland's voters approved the Lisbon treaties partially because of their economic situation, but also because they got a buttload of garantues that any EU decisions on X or Y would not apply to them. That might sound appealing, but if every member state acted like tha the EU would become a quagmire of directives that never apply to more than the 2-3 random countries who didn't press for opt-outs in that particular case. As I've said before I don't approve of everything the EU does and not every decision they make is the optimal choice for my country. But I recognise there are 26 other member states who also have their own interests, and that the EU in its entirety is still beneficial to my country.

If a member state insists that all EU decisions should be in their particular national interest, 100% of the time, and continuously blocks the transfer of new powers that are in the interest of the vast majority of member states, I'd rather have that they leave. I doubt that the EU would penalize the UK if it left. A minority of spiteful MEPs might call for sanctions, but that's it. Of course; every time the EU drafts new legislation and policies it won't take British interests into account - imagine that - and some Brits will interpret this as unfair punishment, no doubt.