Circa three months after
Britain invoked the Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty, making the first formal
step towards the departure of the United Kingdom from the European Union, the
substantive part of the withdrawal negotiations has started today in Brussels. The
aim of the negotiations is to avoid a clear and total hard brexit – i.e. a
divorce without any deal on future relations between the independent UK and the
EU27. Despite seemingly minimalistic in ambition, Britain and the EU will
presumably not achieve a grand consensus on most of the pressing economic issues
and will limit themselves to secure technically achievable and politically
rewarding deal on the “low-profile” aspects of the divorce. In other words,
brexit will be neither “hard” nor “soft”, but only a one that would ultimately allow
both sides to avoid political calamity and to claim hope for future (economic)
rapprochement. And without a political miracle, Brexit will constitute a
loss-loss development for the future of the UK and the EU.
In the past three months, a number of factors have changed
the nature of brexit-related discussions. The European side of the table seems
to be doing fairly well in terms of its ongoing political consolidation.
After the historical turns of 2016 – meaning the election of president Trump, brexit
referendum itself and the former Italian PM Renzi´s (initial) demise – the
trend was reversed by President Macron´s electoral successes which have lately
constituted the source of noticeable hope for the reenergizations of the
Franco-German engine. On other side of the English Channel, the Theresa May-led
Conservative party has just lost its control over the more important
parliamentary chamber in the Westminster.
With one-eighth
of the assigned negotiating time already passed, the UK might be finally bureaucratically
ready for the negotiations, however the political aspects of brexit, are turning increasingly
ambiguous. PM Theresa May called the recent UK general elections, only
two months ago, with essentially four fundamental motivations on her mind: a) to solidify her political standing
within her own party, b) to obtain a
larger (thus more secure) margin of majority in the Westminster, c) to secure a public validation for her
vision of the brexit and d) to
embolden her standing vis-à-vis her European partners.
However, her
electoral miscalculation has created even a more complicated reality and instead
of greater clarity we have greater ambiguity. Not only that we are not assured
about the desired brexit “softness” that will eventually be sought by the
elites in the Whitehall, but also one cannot precisely foresee whether Theresa
May´s surprisingly diminished leadership aura will not embolden the political
ambitions of her successor to be –the list of potential candidates already includes
¼ of her current cabinet. Ultimately, it would be irresponsible to predict
May´s current (political) survival chances. What has, of course, been made
clear by now, is that the Prime Minister´s fate will depend on the brexit
negotiations as the key part of the test of her leadership. However,
with growing internal Conservative party discomfort with her primacy, with a
resurging political opposition and with the lame-duck image in Brussels, PM
May´s chances of managing a decent, proper and orderly (as suggested by herself) brexit are highly
questionable.
Already understanding her
predicament, PM May promised to “listen to all voices” in the party on brexit
and to seek broader counsel on the ideal modality of Britain´s exit from the
union. Does this automatically imply the dismissal of the concept of hard brexit,
as some commentators are already suggesting? Certainly not. The main causal
reasoning of brexit rests in the will of the British public to exercise greater
control over the issue of migration. Whoever leads the British cabinet, whether
it is PM May or anyone else, must have already acknowledged that continuing to
guarantee the freedom of movement (to EU nationals) in any way, shape or form is
currently politically suicidal. Thus, given EU´s persistence on attaching it to
the four fundamental freedoms, the single market membership for an independent
UK remains to be an unrealistic eventuality. Hence, the so-called “soft”
brexit is simply not going to happen – at least without a profound
shift in Britain´s domestic political reality.
However, on the side, the
outlook for the endorsement of “softer” divorce elements being incorporated into the
final deal seem to be considerably more plausible today, than anytime between
the post-referendum pre-election era. A softer brexit would mean Britain and
the EU agreeing on the reciprocal expat right guarantees and developing an almost
membership-analogous approach to cooperation in science, education and possibly
in internal security.
Very much in the spirit of the
mentioned words, one must also underline that nature of brexit will not solely
(or even mainly) depend on UK´s preferences and its negotiating abilities. Continental
European leaders will be seeking a deal which would cause minimal damage to their
economies and to the prestige level of the EU membership status as well. This
automatically implies two certainties: no “cherry-picking” available (this goes
mainly to the UK) and no room for unrealistically positive expectations
on the modality of the negotiations (this shall go mainly to us – the
attentive observers of brexit).
Thus, the mutually endorsed goal
of the brexit negotiations shall be an agreement on the issues of clearly
shared interests with a possible future opening to an ambitious and
comprehensive trade agreement. Given the clear time-constraints of the
negotiation framework and increasingly complicated political context of brexit,
nurturing hope for any agreement that would be significantly more ambitious,
than the one just described, would be wishful and not thoughtful thinking.
Irrespective of
the situation in the Westminster and Whitehall, the brexit talks will be challenging
and a mutually positive end-result is far from realistically achievable. As
these talks unravel today and will occupy the agenda of political operatives on
the both shores of the La Manche
channel until early 2019 – at least provided that everything in negotiations
goes just as intended – Britain and Europe will embark on a final journey – one
that none of the sides seemed to be really interested in just as recently as a
year ago and one that will ultimately turn out to be is the interest of none. Despite
the recent positive turn in the political spirit of Europe´s political elite, brexit
remains to be one of the least fortunate geopolitical changes happening in
Europe.
Tomáš A. Nagy
Defence and Security Programme
GLOBSEC Policy Institute
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