South Africa has also been active in promoting its extra-regional trade and investment capacity, signing 22 Bilateral Investment Agreements between 1997 and 2003, and also a Bilateral Trade Agreement with the European Union (EU) (Box 1).
"Negotiation of a new 'settlement' will open a Pandora's box of demands from all over the EU," said a senior EU official.
Instead, she dwelt on the inadequacy of others' proposals, particularly a "black box" of loopholes through which the EU and emerging markets could minimise the effect of reductions in tariffs.Ms Schwab has a point.
But in the broader sense of negotiating a new treaty, it is neither wise nor useful to open Pandora's box, because every state in the EU, not just Britain, would again try to get their interests in".
The EU chemicals legislation (see box--EU Chemicals Policy) distinguishes between ?existing substances," that is, chemicals declared to have been on the market before 18 September 1981, when the current system for registering chemical substances came into force, and ?new substances" registered since that date.
Oddly, its only reference to the treasury prediction that British families would be £4,300 a year worse off if the UK leaves the EU was a little red box, as shown on the left.
When people feel left behind, they strike back at the ballot box: Wales voted marginally to leave the EU in June of 2016, and the shift away from Labour in the local elections warns of further retaliatory voting in June.
Obviously, all that went out the window with the release of the Alien Quadrilogy DVD box set in 2003, but even in EU-rejecting 2016 the word retains a certain continental cool.
After all, welfare and pensions are still run by national governments, not by the EU and it is those governments that will be punished at the ballot box if things go wrong.All the same, the EU is unlikely to escape the consequences.
