EU and UK struggle to overcome Brexit bad blood

 

EU and UK struggle to overcome Brexit bad blood

 

The EU and UK are learning to live as exes, but their new relationship is framed by mistrust and lingering resentment.

 

Illustration by Ben Jennings for POLITICO

BY DAVID M. HERSZENHORN AND CHARLIE COOPER

February 3, 2021 7:21 pm

https://www.politico.eu/article/brexit-bad-blood-eu-uk-vaccines/

 

The late Friday night phone call between U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen centered on a theme familiar to many divorced couples still entangled by financial, legal and social obligations: What the hell have you done?

 

In this case, Johnson was asking what in the world the Commission was thinking when it invoked an emergency override of the Brexit Withdrawal Agreement’s delicate arrangements for managing the Ireland-Northern Ireland border, as part of new coronavirus vaccine export restrictions — a blunder that inadvertently set off a political firestorm in Dublin, Belfast and London.

 

The same question, however, could easily have been asked at several other points in the month since the U.K.’s de facto breakaway from the EU on January 1.

 

Why did London downgrade the status of the EU’s ambassador in Britain, a seemingly gratuitous display of diplomatic pettiness that has led to retaliatory snubbing of the U.K.’s new ambassador in Brussels?

 

Why are border guards unnecessarily hassling travelers — with British authorities demanding proof of residence from EU nationals, which under the rules is not yet required, and EU authorities unnecessarily stamping passports of British residents on the Continent, which could potentially create bureaucratic headaches for them down the line?

 

And what’s the point of each side still blaming the other’s intransigence for the inevitable unhappy consequences of Brexit, such as musicians and artists needing visas in order to travel for performances and exhibitions?

 

The signatures on the EU-U.K. divorce decree have barely had time to dry. The European Parliament has yet to formally ratify the Trade and Cooperation Agreement reached on Christmas Eve. Years of tough, often bitter, negotiations avoided a no-deal catastrophe but left many questions about the future relationship unanswered. The U.K. and the EU have settled into a new, uncomfortable coexistence framed by deep mistrust and lingering resentment — punctuated by occasional cheap barbs and arguably juvenile jabs.

 

“A trade deal is a very narrow means of communication for two neighbors in such proximity,” a senior EU official said. “We haven’t talked about climate. We haven’t talked about security and defense, and we haven’t talked about our multilateral view on the world. So, there are quite a few things that we need to talk through with the Brits.”

 

Life beyond Brexit

Friday night’s call between Johnson and von der Leyen ended, as many conversations between exes do, with an apology, a promise to fix things, and mutual assurances that everybody really just wants to get along. Von der Leyen announced that night that she had deleted the provision overriding the Northern Ireland border rules. She has since publicly accepted responsibility, saying it was a mistake to even consider invoking the emergency clause in the Brexit deal known as Article 16.

 

Johnson on Tuesday night said the EU’s move had “undermined” the Brexit Withdrawal Agreement and reiterated his government’s “unshakeable” commitment to Northern Ireland. On Wednesday, No. 10 made clear that it would seek to use the EU's misstep as leverage to demand further changes to the border provisions in the Withdrawal Agreement.

 

But by Johnson’s standards, it was a relatively gentle slap at Brussels, and his government has otherwise shown restraint in recent days as the Commission engaged in a public spat with England-based vaccine-maker AstraZeneca over production shortfalls.

 

Top current and former officials and diplomats in Brussels and London said they viewed the post-Article 16 détente as clear recognition in No. 10 Downing Street and the Berlaymont that neither side stands to gain from cycles of mutual destruction — especially not in the midst of a pandemic and accompanying economic crisis. But they also expressed worry about what lies ahead. 

 

“The events of last week, and the Commission’s appallingly ill-judged move on invoking Article 16 of the [Northern Ireland] protocol, from which they only just about pulled back, have further damaged trust,” said Ivan Rogers, who served as the U.K.'s ambassador to the EU from 2013 to 2017. “The optimistic view is that both sides will ultimately learn from their missteps and recognize that they have often had precisely the opposite result from the one they intended. I am not so sure.”

 

Rogers and other experts said that the coming months will only reveal further practical difficulties for citizens and businesses arising from Brexit, as well as new efforts by the U.K. to diverge from the EU that could trigger disputes — for example, over how far London is straying from the level playing field provisions in the new trade deal.

 

“Both sides are now thinking vastly more about domestic constituencies than about how really to try and make this relationship productive,” Rogers added. “I really don’t see that changing.”

 

Making the relationship productive was the central theme of remarks by João Vale de Almeida, the EU’s ambassador to the U.K., in a recent lecture hosted by Bright Blue, a London think tank that advocates for liberal conservativism.

 

The U.K.’s long relationship with the Continent, once defined by royal marriages and military campaigns, and for the last nearly half-century by more prosaic ties within the bureaucratic framework of the EU treaties, is now entering yet another new cycle, Vale de Almeida said.

 

“This is a turning point,” he said, calling the separation “painful.”

 

“There is life beyond Brexit,” Vale de Almeida said. “It is for us now to build that life, to make it happen in a way that it works for our citizens, it works for our business but it also fulfills what I believe is our role in the global community as countries that share fundamental values of democracy, of the rule of law, [of] human rights.”

 

Protocol error

Even as Vale de Almeida has called for new common purpose, his own status has become one of the earliest sore spots in the new relationship, after the British government declared that he would be treated as the envoy of an international organization — ranking him lower than the ambassadors from partner nations.

 

A U.K. official described London’s stance in the dispute over the ambassador’s status as one based simply on “the principle that [the EU] aren’t a state.”

 

Since the vote to leave, the U.K. has frequently signaled its intention to deal primarily (on matters of foreign affairs) with nation states directly — outside of EU structures — and some in Whitehall view the row as one driven by a desire to demonstrate that basic distinction between nation state and international organization.

 

Negotiations over the matter are, however, “ongoing,” the official said.

 

In Brussels, the move was regarded as a petty and vindictive effort by No. 10 to play to its home audience of Brexit supporters, mirroring a similar move attempted, but quickly reversed, by former U.S. President Donald Trump. U.K. officials said it was a false comparison: Trump downgraded an ambassador from existing status; before Brexit, the EU didn’t have a regular ambassador in London.

 

Still, infuriated EU officials noted that most countries in the world treat the bloc on par with nation states because the EU has legislative authority, a currency and a judicial system, which set it apart from other multilateral organizations. Concern goes beyond mere symbolism; there are genuine worries among EU officials that the U.K. move could give license to repressive regimes to take away protection from EU diplomats.

 

Retaliation was swift. The U.K.’s new ambassador to the EU, Lindsay Croisdale-Appleby, quickly found his first meeting cancelled — “postponed for the time being,” an official told POLITICO’s Brussels Playbook — and there were suggestions that Croisdale-Appleby would not be able to formally present his credentials to Council President Charles Michel until the matter of Vale de Almeida’s status is resolved.

 

“That was largely on the U.K. side that they wanted to make their point very publicly,” the senior EU official said. “Hey, we’re sovereign and can take whatever decision we want. That sort of set off the wrong signal.” The official predicted the matter would be resolved soon.

 

Along with the ambassador spat, there have been a series of mini skirmishes over border controls that some officials dismissed as minor and others said highlighted the resentment and ill will that has built up through more than four years of Brexit negotiations. This has included Dutch border guards confiscating ham sandwiches from British truck drivers based on rules that now bar the import of meat products from Britain.

 

Vaccine rivalries

The well of mistrust was evident in the Commission’s rush to impose vaccine export restrictions, which resulted at least partly from frustration that the EU is badly trailing countries like Israel, the U.S. and the U.K. in vaccinating its citizens, and also a sense that AstraZeneca was unable to meet delivery targets in part because it was showing preference to its contracts to supply vaccines to the U.K.

 

Beyond that, some Commission officials clearly feared that Northern Ireland, which enjoys special status under the Brexit Withdrawal Agreement, would become the conduit for illicit vaccine shipments to the U.K. That resulted in the ill-fated provision invoking Article 16, followed by the protests from Johnson and Irish Prime Minister Micheál Martin, and the rapid Friday night row-back by von der Leyen, who was left posting tweets after midnight about her phone calls with her counterparts in Dublin and London.

 

No. 10's restraint cracked a bit Tuesday after French President Emmanuel Macron publicly raised doubts about the AstraZeneca vaccine, which is approved both in the U.K. and EU and has already been administered to millions of British citizens.

 

One Downing Street official told POLITICO’s London Playbook: “It is frankly astonishing that the EU, and the leader of a supposedly functioning Western democracy, would essentially spread anti-vax disinformation.” A minister similarly told Playbook that Johnson now viewed Macron as “a disgrace.”

 

But with Johnson apparently intent on maintaining civility and an open line of communication with Brussels, the question for many officials is what the early tension will mean as the EU and U.K. start to address the myriad questions left unaddressed by the Trade Cooperation Agreement — especially on the question of equivalence in the financial services industry, which is particularly crucial to the City of London.

 

Rogers, the former U.K. ambassador to Brussels, said that he was not very hopeful, either for cooperation on financial services or the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). “On the issues the negotiators parked, I remain highly skeptical,” he said.

 

Luisa Poritt, a former British member of the European Parliament who is now the Liberal Democrat candidate for London mayor, said that she expected further cooperation with Brussels would prove essential in many areas.

 

“We're only really seeing the early ramifications of Brexit,” Porritt said, citing the need for agreements on services, which are a major part of London ’s economy, and on easing travel for touring musicians and artists. “There will be more to come and I think inevitably that will expose a range of areas where we need to build on the deal.”

 

Frenemies with benefits

Several officials predicted that the U.K. chairing the G7 this year, as well as the COP26 climate conference in Glasgow in November, would provide two important platforms for British and EU officials to collaborate and build renewed trust.

 

"When you look at the rise of China and the fact that in the next few years the largest economy in the world will — for the first time in our lifetimes — not be a democracy, you realize there is far more to unite than divide us with continental European countries," former U.K. Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt told POLITICO. "But as with inheritance and divorce, money can poison any relationship and that is the risk with any kind of vaccine trade war which is why it would be such a catastrophe."

 

Maintaining trust will not be easy. In a blog post this week, the EU’s foreign policy chief, Josep Borrell, cited the need to work together on foreign affairs and security matters, but some of his comments were tinged with acid, portraying Brexit as a lose-lose proposition and lamenting the U.K.’s unwillingness to discuss foreign policy during negotiations.

 

“It is clear that the U.K. has lost the ‘multiplier effect’ of EU membership and that it faces a diminished international stature,” Borrell wrote. “In turn, the EU has lost U.K. assets: its permanent seat on the UN Security Council; its security and defense capabilities and its global outlook and diplomatic heft. With Brexit, nothing gets easier and a lot gets more complicated. How much more complicated depends on the choices that both sides will make.”

 

Both Brussels and London are still figuring out exactly who will manage the new relationship.

 

On the U.K. side, a key figure will be the former chief Brexit negotiator David Frost. He was appointed last week into a new, multifaceted job in No. 10: Boris Johnson’s “representative for Brexit and international policy.” In this role he will “lead the U.K.’s institutional and strategic relationship with the EU,” a Downing Street spokesperson said.

 

Whitehall officials familiar with the thinking behind the new role said Frost’s knowledge of the intricacies of the Withdrawal Agreement and the trade agreement were seen as obvious assets that would have been diluted had he been appointed to the job originally earmarked for him: national security adviser.

 

It is, however, unclear precisely how Frost’s role will fit into the structures set out in the trade deal. The U.K. has yet to appoint its representative to the EU-U.K. Partnership Council mandated by the deal. That person will have to be a government minister. Frost is not — and the expectation in Whitehall is that the role will go to the Cabinet Office, perhaps to Michael Gove, who is viewed as something of a polarizing figure in Brussels.

 

Von der Leyen, meanwhile, has appointed Commission Vice President Maroš Šefčovič to the Partnership Council for the EU. Within her own Cabinet, von der Leyen’s top adviser on U.K. relations is her deputy Cabinet chief, Stephanie Riso, who was formerly part of the EU’s Brexit negotiating team.

 

 

New structures are still being created on each side, including the U.K.’s new international policy unit, and a new service for managing the U.K. relationship within the Commission’s General Secretariat. To what extent Frost will be able to focus on strengthening the EU relationship will be an early test of the new institutional bonds between London and Brussels.

 

In his lecture to the Bright Blue think tank, Vale de Almeida urged Brussels and London to keep in mind the global stakes of how they manage their relationship.

 

“Let’s not forget the essence of things” he said. “And the essence of things is that our citizens, our businesses and, I would dare to say, the world need the EU and the U.K. to get their act together, to build on the basis that we have with this agreement, and to move forward.”

 

Jacopo Barigazzi, Florian Eder and Alex Wickham contributed reporting.