I agree with your views expressed in the
first two paragraphs of your reply, but I contest the proposition that
there is free trade within Europe or between Europe and other parts of
the world.
Also, I have no reason to look at EU-induced regulations as a net
benefit, and to the extent that these regulations and European trade
policy are of a benign and beneficial character, they can be achieved by
other arrangements that do not presuppose a political nightmare that
drains the continent of democracy and substitutes the age of social
democracy (which sought to balance the power of capital and labour) with
a neoliberal order that forces Europe into a procyclical and
growth-inhibiting posture that causes great misery among Europeans,
especially among the more vulnerable strata that the Left used to be
concerned about before it shed its social democratic stance and turned
neoliberal and regressive in many other ways.
Continued from here.