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I was sad to see the UK leave the EU. I studied in the UK, and I met my (French) wife at Reading University. I received a British Council scholarship to spend 10 months in the Soviet Union from 1977 to 1978. One of the things that saddened me most was Britain leaving ERASMUS. All through my EU career, I enjoyed working with British colleagues in the national administration, and above all with British EU officials, who were of high quality and raised the standards in our administrations. I was therefore proud when the EU institutions, after the Brexit vote, refused to sack EU staff with the British nationality.
Ever since the British exit from the EU relations have been strained; this is not surprising since a divorce is always painful.1 Over the last months, as the negative effects of Brexit have been sinking in, even the present Conservative government has seen merit in concluding the 2023 Windsor agreement with the EU on goods crossing the Irish Sea from Great Britain to Northern Ireland. It has also acted the return of the UK into the EU research programme. But we should not overstate the significance of these practical moves. This is not a mood change on their part, nor a political drive to reassess the relationship in any profound way.
And yet there comes a time when looking back in anger is counterproductive and sterile for both sides. The situation in the world today requires restoring confidence in the ties between Brussels and London. The upcoming elections in the UK and the start of a new institutional cycle in the EU provide an opportunity for a reset; it will be neither automatic nor easy, whoever will be in charge in London, also since the media landscape is still the old one. But it is both necessary and feasible with a new government.
The EU leadership overall shares this view. A week after the Brexit vote, on 29 June 2016, the members of the European Council meeting at 27 in Brussels stated the following: “In the future, we hope to have the UK as a close partner of the EU, and we look forward to the UK stating its intentions in this respect. Any agreement with the UK as a third country will have to be based on a balance of rights and obligations. Access to the Single Market requires acceptance of all four freedoms.” All of this is still true today. I have sat in all the European Council meetings discussing Brexit. Even when the going was roughest, I felt no animosity towards Britain nor heard any leader express anything but regret about the British leaving the club.
Addressing European security together
Today, the world is burning, and the whole of Europe is under siege. The Russian aggression against Ukraine has changed the traditional paradigms. Both the EU and Britain have a major stake in assisting Ukraine and foiling Putin’s plans. Europe must up its game across the board. David Miliband recently said that “we [Britain] need to be at the [global] table, not on the menu.” That also applies to the EU. We share the same fractured neighbourhood and the same geopolitical and security challenges.
The reset in our relations must start here; there is no time to lose. Also because of the uncertainty on the future direction of the US. What if Donald Trump is elected and carries out his threats concerning NATO and Ukraine? What if the growing rivalry between the US and China will force the Europeans into exceedingly difficult choices? The differences between the EU and the UK will look ridiculously small in that event. We need an ambitious and wide-ranging framework agreement on security.2 I will be brief because some excellent papers recently published on the EIAG website convincingly make the case for such an agreement.
The idea to reinforce defence and security cooperation is not new because it is such an obvious one. Just think of Saint Malo between France and the UK in 1998. Both countries have never stopped cooperating, even after Brexit. The Franco-British defence partnership of Lancaster House (2010) continues to function. They are currently the only two European powers with serious operational capacity, nuclear weapons, and a permanent seat in the UN Security Council. There is however a caveat in my view: this bilateral cooperation cannot be a substitute for an agreement between Britain and the EU as such. It is a logical entry point for Britain into a closer association with European Security and Defence Policy (ESDP). The French are the key drivers behind developing this policy in a much more forceful way. Paris now even mentions the nuclear deterrence element as part of the future discussions, which again raises the question of relations with the UK.
I do not overestimate the present importance of ESDP. But things are now changing because of the outside pressures and the doubts about future American protection. The EU is slowly moving towards becoming a much bigger player in the security and defence area; and it will in any event be central in developing a European armaments industry. This is one of the rare areas where the EU’s margin of manoeuvre has grown because of Brexit. The UK functioned as a brake because it was always afraid of European moves towards more autonomy would weaken NATO, even though it would have strengthened the alliance and been a positive response to the constant complaint of Washington that the Europeans should do more for their own defence. Today, doubts about continued American heavy involvement in European defence originate in Wahington rather than Europe. This is at least to some extent a matter of capacity: with the rise and growing assertiveness of China, the fear in Washington is that the US is overextended in its security commitments. Hence the wish to see the Europeans shoulder the main burden of their own defence. The question is whether and how Britain wants to be part of what I think will happen and gather speed in the coming years within the EU.3 I would add that this could have positive ricochet effects on other areas of cooperation, starting with the industrial sector....
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