Bazz
"In the same context a merge with the European Union is likewise impossible"
Why impossible? who blocks us? who can stopped us? what kind of democracy we have if we can not decide for our future?
I do not speak for UK BUT FOR EUROPEAN UNION.
It is an other story if UK left Australia and is an other story the European Union IN OUR DAYS.
We have the power to press the European Countries as we have or we can take easily the European citizenship as we come from Europe.
I do not see any problem from European Union, maybe from here but the mass majority knows the truth and the risks.
Antonios Symeonakis
Adelaide

ASymeonakis,
You misunderstand, it is not a case of what we might want
or not want, all free trade areas will waste away, including the EU.
The EU will probably continue for a longer time as it is in a small
geographical area.

Transport difficulties and costs will rule out common markets.
There will be trading between close communities just as there was in
times past. Certainly there will be some long range trading but as in
times past will be limited. Want a job as a seaman on a windjammer ?
Or a stoker on a coal fired Boeing 747 ?

We are in for major changes in the longer term and the first
casualties will be trading agreements such as the WTO agreements,
although IARTA, the airline treaty looks like it might go very soon.

I'd like to note that this influx of immigrants from east Europe into west Europe (mostly people that fill up the seasonal jobs in agriculture for which no other candidates are found) seems to be a temporary "problem" that solves itself in time. Already now companies in Belgium and Netherlands indicate that they don't find enough Polish workers to help harvesting in the summer months, because economy in Poland is booming since its admission into European Union, and wages are rising rapidly, taking away the motivation to look for jobs elsewhere. One can argue that such a process should happen gradually and controlled, but the end result seems to be beneficiary for both the "rich" and the "poor" partner countries. With rising wages in eastern europe, jobs in the west are less likely to move away.

a study on the impact of free movement of workers from central and eastern Europe on the UK labour market:

http://www.dwp.gov.uk/asd/asd5/WP18.pdf