  Influence of the nuclear binding in the deuteron deep inelastic structure
function $F_2(x,Q^2)$ is investigated. The description is based on the
Bethe-Salpeter formalism in the ladder approximation and the operator product
expansion within an effective meson-nucleon theory. It is shown that the
binding in a fully relativistic treatment can be simply parametrised and its
origin can be understood in terms of conventional nuclear degrees of freedom. A
numerical estimate of the EMC effect in the deuteron is given.
