While we may be getting into the realms of sophistry, I'm not sure how delegating your authority for law-making to a third party doesn't explicitly involve a loss of sovereignty. Regulations enacted by the European Parliament are binding on members, although one would assume that these are to the benefit of those members.None of which involves any loss of sovereignty. The reason EU regulations have direct effect in the UK is because Parliament has delegated those law making functions to the EU. Regulations are made under the authority of Parliament. They would have no legal effect in the UK whatsoever had Parliament not legislated to allow that to happen. Directives as you say are enacted directly by a Parliament, which can choose not to do so, just as it choose to disapply any regulations emanating from Brussels. Those are choices that would carry adverse consequences but that does not involve any loss of sovereignty.
Even if we’re in the Eurozone our Parliament would have the ability to make it the law that interest is 15%. That decision would probably see us being removed from the Eurozone, but the law of the UK would still be that interest is 15%. That is what sovereignty means.
Sovereignty is not a soundbite, it’s a term of art with a specific constitutional and legal meaning. It relates to where ultimate power rests within a state. In the UK it is settled law that Parliament has been sovereign since the seventeenth century and arguably since Magna Carta. There is no encroachment of sovereignty whatsoever involved in the UK abiding by EU law because the reason, and the ONLY reason we do so is because Parliament has approved of the delegation to the EU of some law making functions in particular areas relating to areas where the EU is competent. ( There are in fact a number of other , more minor, instances where we have delegated law making functions to supra national bodies, such as in the case of notifiable diseases where we abide by the rulings of the WHO and sites of international scientific or cultural significance where we abide by the determinations of UNESCO. The proposed WTO terms would, if adopted, involve a similar acceptance into UK law of regulations made by a supranational body, so I find it piss funny personally that some of the people most keen to leave on WTO terms are also those who bemoan our alleged loss of sovereignty.)
Make no mistake about what sovereignty means. Our Parliament has the power to repeal any EU law it chooses, and if it does so that EU law will no longer be in force in the UK. There may be consequences in doing that, of course, because to do so would place us in breach of our treaty obligations. But that is not something that has anything to do with sovereignty, that is to do with political reality. If Parliament says ‘this EU law no longer applies in the UK’ that is the end of the matter, it no longer applies.
The reason people can’t answer the question ‘how have we lost sovereigny’ Is that we haven’t. The loss of sovereignty argument is advanced purely by those who either don’t know what sovereignty actually means, or do know and are dishonest about the alleged loss of sovereignty.
Membership of the EU is a voluntary choice.
While we may be getting into the realms of sophistry, I'm not sure how delegating your authority for law-making to a third party doesn't explicitly involve a loss of sovereignty. Regulations enacted by the European Parliament are binding on members, although one would assume that these are to the benefit of those members.
The act of delegation is a sovereign decision. Everything else flows from that sovereign decision. If the country in question has an issue with the results of that delegation it can reverse it.
Doesn't feel like that at the moment
While we may be getting into the realms of sophistry, I'm not sure how delegating your authority for law-making to a third party doesn't explicitly involve a loss of sovereignty. Regulations enacted by the European Parliament are binding on members, although one would assume that these are to the benefit of those members.
Because you can take the authority back. The EU can’t stop us from doing that because they are not sovereign and we are. This is what sovereignty is.
This is not true. Within the EU our Parliament could not decide to set aside EU law in any way, because EU law has legal primacy. Parliament might decide it doesn't like something, but the courts would always apply EU law in precedence to domestic, precisely because of that EU primacy that is enshrined within the constitutional arrangement.
By all means be happy with that state of affairs, but to mislead by pretending that the UK could ignore EU directives with just some consequences is untrue. When a member, EU law has precedence, full stop, end of story. And that is a limitation on sovereignty.