The current relationship between Europe and the United Kingdom is definitely not how anyone – Remainers, Brexiters, the Commission, or the Member States – would have designed it. Instead, the Trade and Cooperation Agreement (TCA) and the Windsor Framework (WF), alongside the Northern Ireland Protocol, evolved.
The pressures driving that evolution are clear and include the UK government’s sovereigntist stance and red lines and Europe’s need to protect itself and its Member States from a belligerent actor. Additional pressures are the post-conflict space in Northern Ireland and across Britain’s border in Ireland, the paramount importance for Europe of the European single market and citizen welfare, the European legal space, and European citizenship and the responsibilities that go with that.
Factors driving evolution in UK-EU relations
Looking at British politics now, in particular at the agenda set out by Labour towards Europe, but also the continuing negative stance of the UK press, the lack of a pro-European alternative, and the Europhobia that still lives in the genes of the Conservative Party, it is apparent that the relationship will only change incrementally. It will evolve. It will not be transformed.
Labour’s proposal and the EU’s objectives
In truth, this probably suits Europe currently, as there remain trust issues with the UK, and more than enough pressing problems to the east.
Pro-Europeans in the UK have an ideal evolutionary end-state in mind: membership. How to get there remains the question.
Rejoining the single market: benefits and risks
To paraphrase Richard Dawkins, evolution is like moving from the Wright Brothers’ Kitty Hawk Flyer to a jumbo jet by changing parts step-by-step, where each change is an improvement on what came before.
The UK Labour Party has proposed just such incremental changes. It wants sanitary and phytosanitary (SPS) and veterinary agreements with Europe, but also unspecified sectoral agreements to ease bureaucracy on British exporters. It is understandable that it will seek an agreement that suits the UK’s troubled sectors like food producers and intermediary component exporters. But Europe will have its own objectives. Rightly so. It will propose alignment is areas like insurance, social media, and currency markets. The relationship will not evolve into an international relations “crocoduck”, where the UK selects the parts it wants.
Get news you care about, powered by citizen journalism
The road to membership: challenges and considerations
In all likelihood this brings us on to discussions of the UK rejoining the European single market. Again, the benefits of this to the UK are obvious: a huge boost to its competitive services exporters, and the removal of most of the Brexit manacles from its goods trade.
And for Europe? Will it want a constant conflictual debate with a capricious and possibly truculent UK government obsessed with domestic political questions? Will it see advances in that evolutionary step?
Adding value: the UK’s role in improving the relationship
Which brings us to membership. Again, this would resolve multiple problems for Britain. But for Europe this would represent a risk, given how well it has been functioning since Brexit. Is the UK going to be sand in the gearbox again, as some Europeans believe it is genetically disposed to being, or a more supportive and constructive partner?
To evolve to that ideal end state, the UK will have to focus on making each intermediary step better for Europe. That means assuaging fears, but also demonstrating where value can be added.
That part of the equation is missing from discussions in the UK. Too much of the pro-European discourse is not pro-Europe at all; it’s pro-themselves. It’s about Europe granting concessions (longer visa waivers, free trade in goods, associate customs union membership, legal opt-outs) because the UK is a former member.
It’s vital to stop focusing on what works short-term in UK politics and in the Red Wall, or on what the UK needs. Start looking at how the UK can help Europe and take steps that move things along. The good thing is that, like evolution, the power to make these changes is inside you.
A path forward: commitment, leadership, and the UK’s contribution to Europe
How can the UK improve things?
It’s important not to be prescriptive. Member States will have their own ideas, and the UK will need to be responsive to that. That may be painful, given the interests that States have in relations and cooperation with the UK, for example regarding territorial disputes or tax evasion.
Holistically, however, Europe needs to see improvement beyond the most recent relationship status. That can’t just be economics. From a mercantilist point of view, the TCA has been good for Europe – can it honestly be argued that a sectoral arrangement or EEA would be much better from that standpoint? The UK government, backed up by the Re-join movement, needs to commit fully at each stage, let others lead, praise the European system, and show how the UK can add to Europe, for example, in terms of ballast in trade talks, standards, geopolitics, defence and dealing with refugees.
This may be the only way to avoid the evolutionary dead-ends that abound.
This Our Place in Europe? series has already taken us a long way in identifying the problems to be overcome in joining the EU again, and how much of what needs to be tackled may be down to how the EU sees British attitudes. Don’t miss our next instalment next Friday.
