The UK and the EU
Are Dancing for a Relationship
The loud boasts of
defiance by the British government toward the EU have given way to the quieter
language of negotiation. The outcome will determine just how much post-Brexit
sovereignty London will have.
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March 30, 2021
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·
As Winston Churchill famously said,
jaw-jaw is better than war-war. However, jaw-jaw is less exciting, which is why
the latest news about relations between Britain and the EU has passed most
people by.
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In three separate areas, confidential discussions have
been proposed to resolve tricky issues. Any or all may yet founder. Even if the
talks all conclude in agreement, awkward questions will remain about long-term
EU-UK relations. But for the moment, a new tone has been set for the next few
months.
First, vaccines. This issue has provoked the biggest
recent frenzy. In January, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen
announced that the EU would ban the export of coronavirus vaccines across the
Ireland-UK border. The immediate uproar, not least from Dublin, forced the
commission president to reverse her decision two hours
later. However, the UK’s Brexiters lost no time in denouncing von
der Leyen as someone who could not be trusted to stick by formal agreements.
The wider issue—of Britons receiving their vaccines
far faster than EU citizens—has added to a palpable sense that Brexit Britain
has triumphed over bungling Brussels. Less remarked is that by late
March, the EU had exported 77 million
vaccine doses to thirty-three countries, including 21 million
doses to the UK, while Britain had exported precisely none. Global Britain?
Protectionist Europe? The figures tell a different story.
Privately, both sides knew that grandstanding was
doing them no favors—not least because of the practical matter of making the
vaccines in a cross-border world.
For example, EU-made Pfizer-BioNTech vaccines depend
on the supply of lipid
nanoparticles from Britain. So talks are under way to dial down the
rhetoric and design practical arrangements to keep everyone happy.
Significantly, the UK’s negotiator is Sir Tim
Barrow, a former UK ambassador to the EU who is well liked in
Brussels, not the abrasive Lord Frost, a minister and formally the UK’s chief
negotiator, who seems to regard the EU as an enemy, not a partner.
The second source of friction has been the Northern
Ireland Protocol to the Brexit withdrawal agreement. To keep the border between
Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland fully open—and it’s the only land
border between the UK and the EU—Northern Ireland has acquired a unique status through
the protocol. Politically, the province is part of the UK; commercially, it
applies EU regulations so that its businesses can trade freely with Ireland
and, by extension, the rest of the EU.
To achieve this, the UK has agreed to a commercial
border between Great Britain and Northern Ireland. This has caused traders all
kinds of problems already, even before all the protocol’s rules come fully into
force. This is supposed to happen on April 1. In early March, the UK government
said it would unilaterally extend the grace period that applies to some of the
new rules and not introduce full food controls for a further six months. Maroš
Šefčovič, a vice president of the European Commission, responded by threatening legal action
against the UK.
In late March, the EU sought to reduce the tension by
offering talks on the issue. Irish Foreign Minister Simon Coveney has led the
way: Ireland has an obvious and massive interest in preventing anything that
might undermine the 1998 Good Friday Agreement, which has delivered two decades of peace to Northern Ireland. At the time
of writing, further progress has yet to be made. However, British ministers
have gone quiet on this issue. This looks like a prelude to proper engagement
with the EU and a desire to do a deal.
The third subject on which talks might break a
deadlock is financial services. Brexit has been bad for the City of London, the
capital’s financial district. Thousands of jobs and billions of euros’ worth of
financial assets have left London. This is because the Brexit
withdrawal agreement preserves free trade between the EU and the UK for goods
but not for services.
UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson has always said that
he wanted Britain to “have its cake and eat it”
too over Brexit. That is, he wanted the UK to be free to set its own rules—but
not suffer any penalty for ignoring the EU’s rule book. Not surprisingly, the
EU rejected this approach, which has been described as “cakeism.” To come to
a deal on UK access to EU financial markets, a common framework would be needed
for the rules and professional qualifications that both sides would obey.
On March 26, an agreement was announced—not on what
the rules should be, but on how to start the process of cooperation in this
area. A joint UK-EU Financial
Regulatory Forum has been set up. Technical discussions have
already taken place; the forum will explore the trickier political issues that
need to be resolved.
Standing back and looking at the three issues
together—vaccines, the Northern Ireland Protocol, and financial services—one
can see a distinct change in the mood music. The loud boasts of defiance have
given way to the quieter language of negotiation.
How this process will play out is far from certain.
The fundamental challenge of Brexit remains. Johnson won a big election victory
in December 2019 after promising to “get Brexit done.”
The three sets of talks now in progress or in prospect will test how far
Johnson is prepared to compromise on UK sovereignty after all—and how flexible
the EU is prepared to be in interpreting and enforcing its rules.
Any
agreement is likely to upset someone: Britain’s most passionate Brexiters, the
EU’s most fervent federalists, or both. Complaints of surrender are likely.
Agreement, no agreement, or partial agreement: the long-term consequences of
this delicate process for relations between London and Brussels could be
massive.
Kellner is a visiting
scholar at Carnegie Europe, where his research focuses on Brexit, populism, and
electoral democracy.
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