5 need-to-know facts about Brexit

At issue is that the U.K., which is not a member of the Euro area and doesn’t use the euro currency, doesn’t want to contribute to future Eurozone bailouts. It wants a veto over E.U. legislation that Britons don’t like and to curb migration by deferring in-work benefits for non-U.K. citizens working in the country. The think tank Open Europe projected last March that a worst-case Brexit scenario would cost the U.K. 2.2 percent of GDP by 2030; best-case scenario is that GDP would rise 1.6 percent over the same period. If the E.U. loses the U.K., it loses 15 percent of its GDP. The U.K. has traditionally served as a counterbalance to France in policy debates, with Germany playing the role of conciliatory broker. If the U.K. leaves, Berlin will sometimes have to take on a more directly adversarial role toward Paris. Right after the U.K. held parliamentary elections in May, an ORB poll found that 55 percent of Britons wanted to stay in the E.U., while 45 percent would opt to leave. Those numbers remained relatively stable throughout the summer.