Thread by @uk_domain_names

What has the EU ever done for us?
Shock horror - EU membership costs £9 billion a year. But that's 34p per person per day (1% of Government budget) and in return we get a mindblowing amount of goodness back...
- Longest unbroken period of peace between European nations in history

- Free trade deals with over 70 countries
- Just in time manufacturing that supports millions of jobs, thanks to no customs checks or complex procedures
- Scientific and academic collaboration
- Support for the Good Friday Agreement & active promotion of the Irish peace process

- Shared space exploration
- Participation in the Galileo GPS satellite cluster
- Driving licenses valid all over the EU
- Car insurance valid all over the EU
- Pet passports to make travel with pets simple
- Simplified fixed compensation scheme for flight delays & cancellations

- European Health Insurance Card (EHIC)
- Mobile roaming (calls, texts and data) at home prices
- Portable streaming services (can watch Netflix etc. all over the EU)
- Erasmus student exchange programme
- Simplified VAT reverse charge mechanism for those selling across the EU

- Safer food
- Clean beaches
- Enhanced consumer protection, including for cross-border shopping
- Horizon 2020 (funding and assistance for over 10,000 collaborative research projects in the UK as part of the world's largest multinational research programme.)

- Courses for the unemployed funded by the European Social Fund
- Disaster relief funding e.g. the 60 million euro we received for flood relief in 2017
- Free movement for musicians and their instruments, bands and their equipment, artists and their materials etc.

- Enhanced environmental protections
- Court of last resort (ECJ)
- REACH regulations & EU Chemicals Agency, improving human, animal and environmental safety around chemicals
- Pan-EU medicine testing and licensing
- Security cooperation and sharing of crime/terrorist databases

- European arrest warrant
- EURATOM for medical isotopes
- Support for rural areas
- Better food labelling
- EU funding for the British film industry, theatre and music
- European Capital of Culture programme, which has boosted cities such as Glasgow and Liverpool

- Service providers (e.g. freelance translators) can offer their services to clients all over the EU
- No UK VAT or duty on imports from the EU (great for online shopping)
- EU citizenship (it's a thing - look it up!)

- Cross-border collaboration on taxes, e.g. to hold huge firms like Amazon and Facebook to account more than we otherwise could
- Venture capital funding
- Legal protection for minority languages such as Welsh
- Mutual recognition of academic qualifications

- No credit and debit card surcharges
- EU structural funding (over £2 billion to Liverpool alone) with matched private funding requirement
- Supporting and encouraging democracy in post-communist countries

- A bigger presence on the world stage as a key part of the largest trade block in the world
- Use of EU queues at ports and airports
- Products made or grown in the UK can be sold in 31 countries without type approval, customs duties, phytosanitary certificates etc.

- Protection from GM food and chlorinated chicken
- Objective 1 funding for deprived areas and regions
- Financial services passport, enabling firms in the City to service the whole EU market
- Strong intellectual property protections

- Mutual recognition of professional qualifications
- Consular protection from any EU embassy outside the EU
- Minimum baseline of worker protections (which we can always improve on)

- Enhanced medical research prospects
- A friend to cosy up to against the might of the USA and China

After all that, do you *really* still begrudge 34p per day? If so, what's wrong with you?