Brexit Day? EU says UK left long ago

Brexit Day? EU says UK left long ago

Britain was never fully in the EU, and it may never be fully out either.

By DAVID M. HERSZENHORN AND MAÏA DE LA BAUME 1/30/20, 3:11 PM CET Updated 1/31/20, 6:17 AM CET

https://www.politico.eu/article/brexit-day-eu-says-uk-left-long-ago/

The future relationship may be still somewhere in the future, but the post-Brexit EU is already here — it took shape long before Brexit day as the Brits, for most practical purposes, made their exit ages ago.

When the EU wakes up Saturday morning and the U.K. is finally gone, it will be less a moment that marks threshold change, than an occasion to reflect on how the bloc has already adapted to its new reality.

Even as the Brexit process was hopelessly deadlocked in Westminster, Brussels was adjusting its postures on issues like enlargement, and security and defense — becoming more reluctant to accept new members (something Britain long championed) and displaying more openness to military cooperation (something Britain historically opposed).

There is also a new, if uncertain, balance-of-power, as a taut zipline between Paris and Berlin has replaced the triangle in which the Brits served as the overly apologizing mediator between the spend-happy French and the austere Germans.

As the U.K. pulled back, new coalitions of like-minded EU countries formed, for example, among the Netherlands, Ireland and the Nordics, to replace the British instinct for more liberal, mercantilist economic policies.

Breaking up is hard to do. Unless, of course, breaking up is what you have been doing for three years and 221 days, in which case, it rather becomes second nature.

But while the British departure created a clear opening for France’s more statist tendencies, Paris has not quite capitalized on it — in part, officials, said because French President Emmanuel Macron, a former banker, is personally more liberal-minded than many of his predecessors, and in part because Berlin, the Hague and other capitals have dug in their heels.

And while the U.K.’s retreat has put greater weight and focus on the (always weighty) views of Germany and France, it has not brought demonstrably swifter, or more efficient, decision-making. Brexit has yielded greater EU unity in the most existential sense — even harsh critics of Brussels rarely talk about quitting the bloc anymore — but it has not healed fierce divisions in areas like foreign policy, or cooled the manifold internal rivalries like the persistent rift between East and West.

The U.K.’s exit from EU policy debates has also put the lie to some long-standing tropes, for instance that London provided a special bridge to Washington D.C., or that Britain was the primary obstacle to greater security and defense cooperation.

On U.S. relations, Macron has arguably proved the closest link to President Donald Trump, and the U.K.’s own post-Brexit aspirations have forced No. 10 to make clear some sharp disagreements with the U.S., such as on climate change or more recently on cybersecurity in relation to Huawei, the Chinese tech firm.

On security and defense, the EU’s efforts have advanced, but only at a snail’s pace. It has become clear that other issues — including Germany’s reticence to become a military power in its own right and the fierce priority placed on NATO by the Baltics — provide just as formidable barriers as any sentiment emanating from London in recent years.

Only in Parliament has the British presence been felt continuously to the end — but mainly as individual contributions.

Several officials said that the British absence was felt especially keenly during the debate over opening accession talks with Albania and North Macedonia.

The U.K., which had been a champion of EU enlargement in the past, expressed support for the two western Balkans nations. But London did not get involved in the tense exchanges that ultimately resulted in France leading an effort, also joined by Denmark and the Netherlands, that blocked a plan to immediately start negotiations with both countries.

Breaking up is hard to do

Exactly when the U.K. actually left the EU is a matter of some debate in Brussels. But for sure, officials and diplomats say, it happened long before the official witching hour of midnight this Friday (or 11 p.m. in the U.K.).

Put another way: breaking up is hard to do. Unless, of course, breaking up is what you have been doing for three years and 221 days, in which case, it rather becomes second nature.

Asked to pick out a de facto departure date, EU officials and diplomats point to several possibilities. For some, it was the referendum in 2016; for others when then Prime Minister Theresa May laid out her red lines; for others, it was in September, when Prime Minister Boris Johnson told officials to stop attending meetings.

“For a long time they were abstaining, then they stopped coming,” one diplomat said.

In the Commission, Britain’s significant role largely ended when Jonathan Hill quit as the EU’s financial services chief on June 25, 2016 — two days after Leave prevailed in the Brexit referendum.

In the Council, the U.K. has long abstained from many votes, or simply acquiesced if unanimity was required.

Only in Parliament has the British presence been felt continuously to the end — but mainly as individual contributions, in leadership roles on specific committees, or as voices on particular issues. As a divided national delegation, the Brits’ main contribution, to the very end, was to add rancor and raucousness to debates about Brexit.

Former French President Charles de Gaulle originally blocked the UK from joining the EU | Keystone/Getty Images

“They have been in a leaving mood for quite some time,” a senior EU diplomat said.

For some, the U.K.’s departure offered posthumous vindication for French President Charles de Gaulle, proving he was right to initially block Britain from joining the EU more than 40 years ago, and that the U.K. from the very beginning never really fit in.

The U.K.’s unwillingness to join the euro common currency, and its constant demands for exemptions from various EU policies, not to mention its demand for budget rebates, only reinforced the perception it was an outsider virtually from the moment it got in.

Pierre Sellal, a veteran French diplomat who served two stints as the Elysée’s ambassador to the EU, said that he might pinpoint the U.K.’s departure, at least in spirit, to 1993, when former Prime Minister John Major decided to obtain an opt-out from the “social chapter,” a protocol attached to the Maastricht Treaty that laid out broad social policy goals.

“For me, they started leaving when they preferred an opt-out strategy to a continued presence aimed at influencing political content,” Sellal said. “Those were the first signs of what was going to happen down the road.”

Then, interrupting himself, he said: “The exit took place even before that” — in 1975, just two years after the U.K. joined the European Economic Community, when it held a referendum on whether to continue membership. Remain scored a decisive victory in that contest, with 67.23 percent preferring to stay, compared with 32.77 percent who wanted to quit.

“The country has always been profoundly divided in its membership to the EU,” Sellal said, adding: “From the origins, the position was wobbly.”

Auld lang syne

Asked what they will miss most about the U.K., EU officials and diplomats were quicker to answer. For many, Britain’s role in foreign affairs and security policy tops the list.

“Their intelligence,” one EU diplomat said, before quickly clarifying that she was not in fact intending to call the British smart, but rather referring to the U.K.’s spy services and its extensive network of embassies, diplomats and intelligence operatives around the globe.

While large questions marks still hang over the so-called future relationship, as with everything in Brexit, predicting what lies ahead requires looking backward. A free-trade deal, if one is reached, will be the first such agreement in history in which the parties start with closer relations and alignment than where they expect to finish.

Politically, some officials say that the U.K.’s work on the Iran nuclear agreement, of which it is a co-guarantor along with Germany and France (as well as Russia and China) could serve as a model for cooperation on foreign policy and security issues going forward. The U.K. will still be a permanent member of the U.N. Security Council, and officials in London and Brussels repeatedly stress that EU and U.K. values and interests remain perfectly in sync.

Similarly, officials said there is every reason to expect that the EU and U.K. would continue to see eye-to-eye on sanctions policy, particularly as it relates to Russia. The same appears to be true about climate policy.

Or that’s what some officials on the British side seem to hope. The EU side seems a bit more divided, with some still eager to illustrate there is a price to pay for quitting.

However it plays out, U.K.-EU relations post Brexit might not be much different than EU-U.K. relations pre-Brexit. Britain as an EU member with its many “opt-outs” could eventually be an EU non-member with many “opt-ins.”