FactCheck: will Brexit hurt science?
More than 150 leading scientists including Professor Stephen Hawking have signed a letter to the Times saying a vote to Leave the EU would be a “disaster for UK science and universities”.
We don’t propose to FactCheck Hawking’s theories on information hidden behind the event horizon of black holes, but his views on Europe are fair game, and critics say he and all the other professors are scaremongering.
The academics who signed the letter say Switzerland is now paying the price for crossing Brussels on the free movement of workers, and Britain could get the same treatment. What are the facts?
The analysis
Switzerland’s relationship with the EU is sometimes held up by Eurosceptics as a model for how Britain could rebuild relations with the bloc after a Leave vote.
The Swiss managed to negotiate a number of bilateral treaties granting them partial access to the EU’s single market without becoming a member, although there are question marks over how good the deal really is.
As part of the agreement, Switzerland had to sign up to many of the key EU principles, such as the free movement of goods and people.
Relations hit the skids in February 2014 when a slim majority of voters backed a proposal by the right-wing Swiss People’s Party to introduce quotas for EU migrant workers – a breach of the free movement rule.
There were warnings of dire consequences, and some EU-watchers saw the stand-off as a kind of trial run for how the EU might treat Britain in the event of a Leave vote.
The prominent Eurosceptic Conservative MEP Daniel Hannan wrote immediately after the vote that the EU could not afford to punish Switzerland over the affair, given its importance as a trading partner.
