Norway, Iceland, Switzerland and other countries are in the European Economic Area, which is a superset of the EU. The UK had the opportunity of staying in the EEA, but that wouldn’t have been a hard enough Brexit to appease the gammon, so it was rejected. Of course, the EU could give the UK special treatment and include them in the programme, but it does not follow that they reasonably should do so, and there are competing political pressures against them making such an exception.

Are you going to demand voting rights for the "European Parliament" as well?

It's interesting to note how different countries within the union are taking about who to include and who to exclude.

It clearly goes beyond the ostentatious justification for this of presenting a united front against Chinese protectionism.

The French representative talks about limiting it to only the EU27, which wouldn't even include the Nordics, who are almost EU in all but name. France would really like to be a big fish in a smaller pond, it would benefit their industry the most that way.

Poland’s economic development minister, Michał Baranowski, said it was too early to say whether countries such as Switzerland, the UK, Japan, Australia and Canada would be in or out, adding: “All these countries are in the mix of the discussion.”

This statement seems to implicitly include the Nordics in the arrangement by not mentioning them. In contrast to France, Poland's industry would benefit more from open trade with more countries outside the EU bloc.

It shouldn't be a surprise of course that politicians are prioritising their own countries' interests in such discussions - if anything, that's their job.

I agree, but technically we are still a European country. We left the union, not the continent.

Yet the meatheads think that Japan is suitable for the branding. Seriously.

My only concern now is that the EU has their own Trumpy parties that could soon have power in both Germany and France. I'm not sure now what we might be rejoining.

Eurasia is the continent. Europe always been a Club.

The UK is in Europe

Economically they told Europe to fuck off. Actions have consequences. UK never likes to be referred to as Europe.

What he needs is a tiny little asterisk with a note saying: By Europe we actually only mean EU member states and not any other country geographically located in Europe but outside the EU, like Switzerland.

You know, for the people that don't understand how geography works.

😜

We never left Europe and never will, continental land masses are fairly robust. We did leave the EU though stupid as it was.