Brexit and the future of the EU
BarcelonaThe last-minute compromise between London and Brussels on 24 December, just before Christmas, put an end to agonising negotiations that had lasted 10 months and had already been preceded by almost three years of agreements and disagreements, including changes at 10 Downing Street. The end of Brexit, which will be effective from 1 January despite the need for formal approval by the Parliaments of the 27 Member States and the European Parliament, scheduled for the beginning of the year, is good news because it avoids the chaotic scenario of no-deal at the very worst moment of the pandemic. But, beyond the small print of the agreement, the smooth functioning of which will depend largely on the good will of the two parties, it is important to underline the success of the EU's ability to maintain a unified negotiating position throughout these four years, represented by the figure of Michel Barnier, and to avoid the danger of each state seeking bilateral agreements à la carte.
The EU is therefore strengthened from a political and commercial point of view, since it has not had to make major concessions to withstand the pressure that Boris Johnson has put on it over the last year. Johnson had flirted with the idea of no-deal in order to strengthen his position, but the image of these days of thousands of lorries trapped at the Dover border and the danger of shortages in the UK has given a final impetus to the negotiations. It has become clear that, in the event of a non-agreement, the United Kingdom had the most to lose.
From now on, we will have to ensure that the agreement is complied with and that British companies do not take advantage of it to compete unfairly, since they will have free access to the European market without quotas or tariffs, although it will be compulsory to maintain the labour and environmental standards set by the EU. This is the key point of the agreement, since it implies that London will not be able to relax these policies (as Brexiteers advocated) in order to make its economy more competitive.
As for the EU, from 2021 onwards, a new post-Brexit stage will begin in which it will be necessary to address once and for all how to achieve a qualitative leap in the European project. Until now, the British have acted as a brake on the project, since they have always been suspicious of any transfer of sovereignty. The problem for the EU is that, with the UK out, it now has other brakes, namely the nationalist and ultra-conservative governments of East European countries such as Hungary and Poland. Brussels has to find a way to advance political, economic and social integration and bypass the vetoes of these governments.
There is no doubt that functioning even more as a club of states than as a real union with 500 million European citizens makes this objective difficult, and there is a real danger that the project will become stagnant and go adrift, prisoner on the one hand of state nationalisms and on the other of Brussels's bureaucratic opacity. If this scenario is combined with a thriving UK outside Europe, the future of the EU will be in question.
