Theresa
May stands awkwardly alone among other EU leaders as she waits for
the EU council meeting to start in Brussels on Thursday. Later in the
day, the other 27 leaders will be holding dinner without her, in
order to discuss Brexit
'Lonely
Theresa May' video at EU summit is Brexit in a nutshell
Footage
of PM looking forlorn as other leaders chat is a telling image of
bloc’s unity – but in reality there are plenty of divisions
Jennifer Rankin in
Brussels
Friday 16 December
2016 00.52 GMT
It was described as
Brexit in a single shot.
Theresa May stood
awkwardly in the middle of the room while EU leaders chattered and
embraced, apparently oblivious to her presence.
Amid the roar of
voices, the EU foreign policy chief, Federica Mogherini, greeted the
prime minister of Luxembourg, Xavier Bettel, with air kisses and a
friendly pat on the back. Standing alone, the British prime minister
fiddled with her cuffs.
May, of course, was
not ignored by leaders as they arrived in Brussels for a summit on
Thursday. Although May walked in alone, another clip showed her
smiling and talking to other people in the room.
But the snapshot
happens to be a telling image of what the leaders of the other 27
member states want to convey. That, while Britain heads for the EU
exit door uncertain of what it is doing, the EU’s remaining 27
stand strong and together – united, as the EU motto goes, in
diversity.
Even seasoned
Brussels diplomats have been surprised by how well EU unity has held
together since Britain’s vote to leave. Over a silver service
dinner this evening, EU leaders will once again seek to assert that
unity, when they repeat their well-worn lines that the UK cannot
cherrypick the best bits of the EU.
But in truth the EU
27 have little room for complacency. Brexit may be the one thing that
truly unites them. During the rest of the summit, painful divisions
were on display as leaders confronted the other existential problems
facing the bloc, from migration and dealing with Russia to the
eurozone.
Countries are
deadlocked over how to share the cost of record numbers of migrants
and refugees arriving on Europe’s shores. Germany, Italy, Greece –
the countries coping with the largest number of arrivals – are
pressing for the rest of the EU to do more. But the idea of fining
countries for not taking in refugees has stalled, following bitter
opposition from Hungary and Poland. Meanwhile, fewer than one in 20
refugees have been found homes under an EU relocation plan.
Fissures remain
deep, too, over Russia. The EU will almost certainly on Thursday
rubber-stamp a decision to continue economic sanctions on Moscow for
its actions in Ukraine. But this was a foregone conclusion and the
bloc is split over how to deal with its large eastern neighbour.
Germany and France, backed by a Brexit-distracted UK, have pressed
for sanctions on Russia in protest over its bombing campaign in
Syria. But Italy remains firmly opposed, a stance unchanged under its
new prime minister, Paolo Gentiloni.
EU diplomats have
been forced to watch powerlessly as the humanitarian catastrophe in
Aleppo has unfolded. The French president, François Hollande,
arrived at the summit insisting that Europe must make its voice
heard. But, while the EU is drawing up reconstruction plans and has
agreed terse resolutions and despairing statements, it has not had
any influence on the ground. EU leaders are likely to declare they
are “considering all options”, almost word-for-word the
conclusion reached in October.
During weeks of
immense suffering in Aleppo, the EU has been debating abstruse plans
to develop defence capability, a discussion that continues at
Thursday’s summit. Eurosceptics like to say Brussels is building an
EU army, but the reality is closer to a paper tiger. The EU can draw
on rapid-reaction forces of 1,500 soldiers to stabilise crises but
has never done so. It has mechanisms to allow EU armies to work
together, but these have never been tried.
Meanwhile, the
eurozone crisis is lapping at the door. On Wednesday, officials froze
short-term debt relief measures for Greece, after the prime minister,
Alexis Tsipras, decided to give a Christmas bonus to pensioners, in
defiance of Greece’s bailout terms.
Brussels insiders
say there never was a golden age of unity, even when only 12 or 15
members were in the club. But the stakes, they point out, have
changed.
“A lot of people
say it used to be easier in the old days,” one senior diplomat told
the Guardian recently. “I was there in the old days; it just isn’t
true. In the 80s we would have had vetoes because of the price of
milk. Now we are way beyond that; we have vetoes because of
migration. The process of integration has deepened so far we are now
at very fundamental issues. And it is perfectly legitimate for those
discussions to be long and difficult.”
Little wonder, then,
that the EU 27 will be keen to maintain their united front on Brexit
when, on Thursday night, they sit down for a dinner to discuss it
without the presence of the UK prime minister. But, as the bloc
flounders on other vital themes, it is less and less obvious that the
EU’s machinery for building compromise is working. Once
negotiations get real, even the unity on Brexit could begin to fray.
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