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[...] Last week, Slovakian Prime Minister Robert Fico fired the most explicit warning shot yet to the UK, saying that Slovakia, Poland, the Czech Republic and Hungary would be prepared to veto a Brexit deal unless their citizens retained their rights to work in the UK. May dismissed the threat, saying “The 27 will sign up to a deal with us,” and “This is not just about us, it’s actually about their relationships and trading within that European arena.”
In this “phoney war” stage, when the UK has yet to state its position on the fundamental questions of whether it will seek to remain within the EU’s customs union or the single market, we can indeed put the rhetoric of the Slovakian Prime Minister down as a stalking horse negotiating position. However, the episode does illustrate that, if the UK and the EU simply return to a narrow, technical debate about how much control the UK can secure over migration in return for continued trade access to the EU’s single market, which was also the crux of David Cameron’s renegotiation, we could be in for a very bitter and tempestuous Article 50 negotiation that satisfies neither party.
May is right to be ambitious. The UK is not Norway, Switzerland nor Canada—all of whose relationships with the EU have been cited as possible models for the UK to follow. The UK is a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council, Europe’s leading Nato member state and a member of the G7. It’s in the UK’s and the EU’s interests to develop a new comprehensive relationship based not simply on continued trade and investment but one which reflects Britain’s continued commitment to the European Continent’s security and economic wellbeing and vice versa.
Reaching a bespoke UK-EU relationship will require flexible and creative thinking from both parties. The UK, which has spent much of the last two decades in reactive mode when it comes to the EU, would need to change its mindset to establish how it wishes to continue to be a constructive European player. The EU, meanwhile, would have to compromise on the dogma that the “four freedoms” (of goods, services, capital and people) and the acquis communautaire are entirely inviolable.
However, there are several reasons to suspect that political flexibility and creativity could be in short supply within the EU in the coming months. First, in the French Presidential and German Federal elections in 2017 we are likely to see the continuing rise of the Front National’s Marine Le Pen, who threatens to blow the EU apart, and the further decline of German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s political authority at home and abroad. Second, since the UK’s vote to leave, the central and eastern member states have become more assertive, increasing their attacks on the Brussels institutions, calling for greater autonomy for national governments and more intergovernmentalism. Ironically, some of these instincts were shared by the UK. Third, the ideological divisions within the eurozone on how to tackle its chronic economic and governance issues rare no nearer to being resolved. Even leaving Brexit aside, these dynamics leave much of the EU feeling politically vulnerable. [...]