European Union

This summer's droughts have ruined harvests in many places in Europe, with huge losses for farmers. In Germany, the state has promised its support, and the EU Commission has also pledged financial aid. While some commentators believe farmers should adopt new practices others make the point that consumers and retailers also need to change their ways.

In a televised interview Liviu Dragnea, the leader of Romania's ruling party PSD, has claimed that he was the target of a murder attempt in 2017 and implied that US billionaire George Soros was behind it. According to prosecutors, however, the case was never reported. Newspapers in Romania doubt the veracity of the allegation and wonder what Dragnea could be up to.

Greece officially concluded its ESM financial assistance programme this week. For the first time in eight years it will have to finance itself on the markets. Although its economic data has improved of late, one in five Greeks is still unemployed and the national debt is still at 180 percent of GDP. Can the country get back on its feet on its own?

After a week of delay an Italian coastguard ship carrying 177 migrants has been given permission to dock in Sicily. Italy's interior minister Matteo Salvini had initially threatened to have the migrants brought back to Libya if other EU member states didn't agree to take them in. Commentators from Italy voice deep concern about Salvini's anti-migrant policy.

In the run-up to the Swedish parliamentary elections on 9 September polls are pointing to a deadlock with neither the left nor the conservative Alliance winning a majority, because the Sweden Democrats are likely to garner almost 20 percent of the vote. Commentators believe it will now be virtually impossible to ignore the right-wing populist party and its arguments.

So today sees the publication of the first tranche of ‘no-deal’ preparedness notices from the British government.

I’m writing ahead of this, so maybe this’ll be out of date within a few hours, but let’s see what we can piece together so far.

The basic issue for the government is that it’s now caught on the horns of a dilemma.

On the one hand, it wants to demonstrate that ‘no-deal’ is a viable option for the UK to pursue, in order to given credibility to the ‘no deal is better than a bad deal’ line that has been poo-pooed for so long by observers. In so doing, it might be able to leverage more concessions out of the EU in the Article 50 process.

On the other, it doesn’t want to make ‘no-deal’ look too unproblematic, for the simple reason that the government recognises that it would be very substantially worse than any likely agreed deal. Detoxifying ‘no-deal’ might encourage backbench pressure to actively pursue that route.

Add in much talk about (another) resurrection of ‘project fear’, plus the negative reaction to the impact assessments finally released earlier this year, and it’s not hard to see why this element of the process has been one the government might not be particularly enthused about.

And yet, pursue it, it must.

Just as the EU has been working on its own contingency planning, it was always necessary that the British government do the same.

In purely abstract terms, it is necessary both to know what your alternative to a negotiated outcome might be and to prepare for it, just in case. That’s necessary because a negotiation is definitionally not only in your hands, but also in the hands of others: if they falter, for whatever reason, then you have to be covered.

In the case of Brexit, that fundament is very much more important for a number of reasons.

Firstly, the structure of Article 50 means that the critical decision has already been taken at the point of notification, which means that the default outcome is the UK’s exit from the EU without a deal next March: only an active decision and agreement by both sides will change that.

Secondly, the novelty of the process raised the likelihood of difficulties in negotiating.

And finally, the lived experience of Article 50 has further raised the chance of problems, with the exciting mixture of a lack of British strategic intent and a repeated willingness to lose negotiation time to domestic political battles.

As a result, not only should we expect preparation for ‘no-deal’, but we should have been more concerned if that preparation didn’t take place.

Of course, there’s preparation and there’s preparation.

Here, the track record doesn’t look so good for the government. The impact assessments were cursory and successive White Papers have been largely devoid of the level of detail required to operationalise a contingency plan.

That said, the volume of notices – some 80 in total – suggests more work has gone into this round of work. So the bigger challenge is how to handle the uncertainty of what will be what come 30 March.

This is really the weakness of going ‘no-deal’: the fundamental uncertainty about what will hold and what will give.

From the limited leaks so far, the government appears to be suggesting unilateral maintenance of pre-exit rules and regulation in many areas, plus some short-term emergency stock-piling to get through the critical first weeks. That suggests a model of emergency talks with the EU to resolve critical systems, before a much longer-term reconstruction of relations.

Put like that, it rather makes sense: don’t frighten the horses any more than they already are, while working on a fix in the background.

But this model runs in various problems. Most crucially, while it might address internal activity within the UK, it cannot fix cross-border activity, again for the reason that the EU’s actions will be in the hands of the EU, not London.

Keeping pre-exit rules in place is one thing, but it doesn’t – and can’t – mean that the EU (or anyone else) has to extend the same regime, or accept UK compliance, which would be operating on a unilateral basis.

So even before we get into businesses’ concerns about supply-chain disruption (or even the possibility of stockpiling in the first place), there’s a big question mark over the entire approach.

All of which brings us back to the dilemma.

While contingency planning is to be welcomed, it shouldn’t be taken as a mark of the British government giving up on securing a deal on the Withdrawal Agreement. The costs, and the uncertainties about the costs, of ‘no-deal’ are already generally understood in both economic and political terms, and have already pushed the UK towards a much more robust pursuit of an agreement.

Sadly, pursuits don’t always succeed, so the better we are prepared for the alternative, the better.

The post Giving up on Article 50? appeared first on Ideas on Europe.

So far fears that Brexit would lead to the unravelling of the EU have proved unfounded. Nevertheless, the effect of the UK’s withdrawal on the future of European integration remains open to much debate and speculation. Whether Brexit spell boom or doom for European integration was the topic of a recently published report for the European Parliament’s Committee on Constitutional Affairs. The report’s editor, Tim Oliver, sets out some of the report’s key findings. 

Britain’s relationship with the EU and European integration has rarely been smooth. Britain’s decision to leave might, therefore, free the Union of what Sheffield University Professor Stephen George, in his 1990 book, termed ‘an awkward partner’. But note the word ‘might’. As with any Member State, the extent to which the UK has shaped European integration is difficult to accurately measure and assess. Britain might be described as ‘an awkward partner’ but that doesn’t mean it’s ‘the awkward partner’. Other Member States have also been awkward and Britain’s own contributions can often be overlooked in favour of a focus on when it has been difficult.

Nevertheless, with Britain headed towards the exit, the EU needs to assess how it will be changed by the departure of its third largest Member State. Before the UK’s referendum, views were expressed that a vote for Leave could bring about significant changes to European integration. On the one hand stood the prospect of the EU unravelling, with the UK’s vote triggering similar referendums elsewhere in the EU, perhaps even provoking the Union’s disintegration. On the other hand, there was the possibility that the UK’s withdrawal could lead to the strengthening of the Union by facilitating further integration. As of the summer of 2018, fears that the UK’s withdrawal would lead to the unravelling of the EU have proved unfounded. Nevertheless, the effect of the UK’s withdrawal on the future of European integration remains open to much debate and speculation.

To assess what the full effect might be, the European Parliament’s Committee on Constitutional Affairs commissioned a report into the topic that was released recently. ‘The Impact of the UK’s Withdrawal on EU Integration’ was edited by myself and with contributions from Catherine Barnard, Steven Peers, Matthias Matthijs, Linda Hantrais and Garvan Walshe. We approached the question by looking back at the UK’s positive and negative effects on European integration in several areas. From this, we drew up an assessment of how the UK’s withdrawal would affect future European integration. The areas chosen were the internal market, social policy, justice and home affairs, the Eurozone, and foreign, security and defence. These areas were chosen because they cover the EU’s political economy (internal market and the Eurozone), society (social policy), and Europe’s security and international standing (the area of freedom, security and justice, and foreign, security and defence cooperation). Each of these areas has seen varying degrees of integration both historically and more recently. The UK’s involvement also varies in each area, due, for instance, to its non-membership of the Eurozone contrasting with its central role in the internal market and its ambivalent role in defence and security policy.

The full report – which can be found here – was presented to the AFCO committee by Garvan Walshe at a special workshop on 11 July. The report shows that in some areas the UK has delayed or blocked European integration, making it more of an awkward partner in European integration than most other Member States have been. The UK’s opposition to European integration stems from the UK’s domestic politics, where, in contrast with the situation in other Member States, British politicians have rarely if ever pursued anything more than a transactional approach to EU membership. The UK’s departure could, therefore, be an opportunity for the remaining EU to integrate further.

However, it should not be overlooked that, often, the UK’s delaying and blocking tactics have been bypassed. One famous example is in the Eurozone, where Britain’s opposition to the Fiscal Compact led other Member States to establish the agreement outside the EU. The UK’s withdrawal is also not a short-term process; as it continues there is a risk that the UK could become a non-EU alternative that appeals to Eurosceptics in the remaining EU Member States. Furthermore, other Member States have also been awkward partners. Their awkwardness is now likely to play out in a process of differentiated integration, where some Member States integrate more quickly in some areas compared to others.

While the EU is unlikely to disintegrate because of the UK’s withdrawal, the report notes that significant systemic challenges remain, not least within the Eurozone and in facing a range of international pressures. This means the effect of Brexit on European integration will be determined by a balance between two effects. First, the UK’s success or failure outside the EU and how this is perceived within the remaining Member States. Second, the EU’s ability to overcome its systemic challenges, and so continue to demonstrate to EU citizens that, compared to other options, it can respond to their political demands and provide effective solutions to the problems they face.

This article first appeared on the Loughborough University London blog. 

The post Does Brexit spell boom or doom for European integration? appeared first on Ideas on Europe.