Abstract
The UK triggered Brexit, as the outcome of a democratic process that involved a referendum, repeated confirmations in parliament by overwhelming majorities and a general election. For the EU, Brexit marks a qualitative change in the nature of European integration. It has opened the door for permanently discontent member states and also for other outliers to leave the club, which as we argue is a very positive development, as member states need to contribute to the common good and be committed to shared values. Allowing for special deals or concessions with privileges that only accrue from membership or for too flexible a EU (to accommodate very different preferences) would undermine the European integration project in the long run. It follows that the EU cannot give in to a soft Brexit bespoke agreement, as that would mean in practice free riding on the EU: the UK would maintain most of its EU membership advantages without the obligations (sharing sovereignty) and the commitment to the project of a member. The EU can only work and deliver if it is cohesive, that is, if it manages to build a strong political core (the Eurozone) to which differentiated integration can be anchored.
The views here summarised were part of our 2017 winter and spring term presentations in various classes and seminars at the LSE (including the LSE’s Brexit lecture series), King’s College London and Católica Lisbon SBE, in seminars at the ESC, St Antony’s, Oxford University, the National Defence Institute, Lisbon, and the University of Düsseldorf and in classes at Nova SBE and INA. We are grateful to the many students and to colleagues for helpful discussions and insights, especially to Paul De Grauwe, Brigid Laffan, Waltraud Schelkle, Gijs De Vries, Michiel van Hulten, José Tavares, Teresa Lloyd Braga, Lorenzo Codogno, Kevin Featherstone, Simona Talani, Kalypso Nicolaïdis, Charles Enoch, Russell Kincaid, Jorge Braga de Macedo, Stefan Thierse, Hartwig Hummel and Benedicta Marzinotto and to the many people who kindly commented on our regular posts on the LSE, “The UK in a Changing Europe” and the Oekonomenstimme pages.
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Notes
- 1.
The decision to have an in-out referendum came in the sequence of many years of growing unease with respect to EU membership (and opposition from within the Union), in the course of which the UK became the EU’s least integrated member (see König 2015, for an illustrative graphical presentation).
- 2.
In the well-known terminology of Hirschman (1970).
- 3.
To avoid that outcome, the UK would need to ask for a prolongation or interruption of the process, which would require the unanimous approval by the EU27 and would almost certainly come with new conditions attached. That would constitute a rather humiliating situation for the UK and would only erode its credibility and bargaining power even more.
- 4.
It is also a logical consequence of ever more diverging UK preferences from the EU club (see Bongardt and Torres 2016b). In truth, the UK already had different preferences with regard to the sovereignty/economic benefit trade-off at the outset: It preferred an intergovernmental preferential trade organisation—it did not want to be part of the supranational European Economic Community (EEC) and founded the intergovernmental European Free Trade Association (EFTA) instead—but ended up joining the EEC because of its larger economic benefits. And indeed that membership helped it revert the British economic decline (Campos and Coricelli 2017).
- 5.
On 29 June 2017, 49 “Labour rebels” (about a fifth of the Labour party), with the Liberal Democrats and the Scottish National Party and others, signed an amendment to the Queen’s speech, which called for the government to abandon the idea that “no deal is better than a bad deal” in the Brexit talks and to negotiate for the UK to remain in the single market and the customs union . The amendment was clearly defeated as it only got 101 votes (less than one-sixth of the House of Commons). Moreover, after the vote the Labour leader, Jeremy Corbyn, asserting his authority in the party, sacked the three shadow ministers who had voted in favour of the pretension.
- 6.
- 7.
The reason is that the Leave vote was directed at the UK’s EU membership status quo—which given the manifold UK opt-outs and non-participation in policy areas essentially boils down to leaving the internal market—and that EU additional concessions offered to the UK (the UK pre-referendum settlement) had not changed the outcome. Once the British people—perhaps unexpectedly for the proponents of the referendum (which was to be used as a bargaining tool in the EU)—had voted by a majority (52% to 48%) in favour of leaving the EU, those additional and far-reaching exemptions, which the government of former Conservative prime minister Cameron had demanded and obtained as a pre-condition for running a remain campaign and staying in the EU club thereafter, became invalid.
- 8.
Jeremy Corbyn had already voted in favour of leaving the EEC in the 1975 referendum , spoke out against the Maastricht Treaty, which established the European Union, and voted against the Lisbon Treaty in 2008.
- 9.
The former Lib Dem leader and vice prime minister from 2010 to 2015, Nick Clegg, defended (Clegg 2017) after the general election that the EU should grant the UK access in the future to the internal market and the customs union as to minimize the negative consequences from Brexit, whereby the EU should commit to a reform of the free movement of labour (including an emergency brake against especially high EU immigration). Such a position does not differ much, if at all, from the position of David Cameron’s government, which led to the referendum and to Brexit, as it only takes into account the short-term interests of the UK. Obviously such a soft Brexit stance amounts to free riding on the EU and has no chance even to be considered by most of the EU27. It shows, however, that even the traditionally pro-European Lib Dems (at least before they entered into a government coalition led by the Conservatives) do not quite defend the EU and constructive UK membership but seem aligned with other Eurosceptic postures, just aiming at some cherry-picking on its institutions.
- 10.
Sixty-four per cent of UK respondents opted for national identity only, with only 31% feeling attached to a shared—national and European—identity (Laffan 2016).
- 11.
The idea (put forward by Timothy Garton Ash 2017) that if the priority is the economics then one must logically argue that Britain should stay in the EU is based on a false premise. As the author recognises, David Cameron had fought the referendum even exaggerating the negative economic consequences of Brexit and lost it. In fact, people voted for Brexit, opting for regaining what they see as sovereignty in spite of risking to forgo some economic benefits. As we argue below, there is a trade-off between sovereignty and economic benefits and therefore a UK preference for control spoke stronger than the loss of possible economic benefits. This is how democracy works.
- 12.
Defenders of a reversal of the decision argue that people did not vote what type of Brexit they wanted. The argument does not make much sense, as there is only one type of Brexit: to leave the EU. It is difficult to imagine that people voted to leave the EU but that their intention was to stay in the EU’s single market . Because what else could the UK want to leave, given that it is not member of EMU, Schengen, police and justice matters (block opt-out with selected opt-ins), secured a protocol to the treaty relating to the application of the Charter of Fundamental Rights and does not participate in many other EU institutions (most notably related to the completion of economic union and the strengthening of economic governance)? Eventually people may have different preferences on what type of relation they want with the EU in the future. However, that is irrespective of the first step (Brexit) and can only be settled after the UK leaves the EU, hinging on mutual agreement with the Union (conditioned by EU common interest and the interest of the EU27).
- 13.
The success of anti-EU populist parties in continental Europe, especially in France, is prominently rooted on the one hand in the dislike of the EU’s stance attributed to UK or Anglo-Saxon deregulated economic model and, on the other hand, in what is seen as a neglect of the European model. In that respect, the UK exit will also be helpful.
- 14.
See Closa (2016) for an interpretation of Article 50 and its use, including its potential strategic use.
- 15.
Such an apparently open position amounts, on the one hand, to a subversion of the democratic process that led to the country’s decision to exit the EU and, on the other hand, to a (not very wise, if not naïve) invitation for any EU country to try to extract short-term dividends at the expense of the common good and the sustainability of the European project.
- 16.
Brigid Laffan (2016) calls attention to the fact that there are real dangers to the future cohesion of the Union if the UK is seen to benefit from exiting.
- 17.
Note that even when leaving the Union it is always in the UK’s long-term national interest to have a strong and stable neighbour (the EU). That implies that the EU needs to function well and deliver.
- 18.
A transitional agreement after 30 March 2019 seems possible but conditional on a clear perspective for a future agreement and time limits (European Parliament red line).
- 19.
The UK accounts for only 15% of the EU’s GDP.
- 20.
It is also not clear whether countries like Norway, Iceland and Liechtenstein would welcome the UK’s application given its disparate size.
- 21.
For a critical appraisal and criticism of the EU’s current strategy of pursuing comprehensive bilateral trade agreements underpinned by far-reaching bilateral rules that govern the relationship, see Bongardt and Torres (2017b).
- 22.
The country studies yield that a larger number of EU member states is likely to support a hard Brexit , few a soft Brexit and some take a more case-by-case view.
- 23.
However, as Gros (2016) observes, “real-world examples show, no country that wants to benefit from the European Project has been able to have its cake and eat it. Open borders and economic integration require common rules”.
- 24.
The proposal for a continental partnership by Pisani-Ferry et al. (2016), considerably less deep than EU membership but rather closer than a simple free trade agreement , is incompatible with this view and, in our opinion, with EU interests. Being very flexible to accommodate UK (or other countries’) interests through ever more differentiated integration it risks limiting the evolution of governance from intergovernmental to supranational when preferences converge among club members and to lose sight of creating a strong EU core. It would also mean to give in to the strategic use of Article 50 in the pursuit of national interests in detriment of the EU27 and of the European integration process.
- 25.
Demands on the part of some in the “remain” camp for a vote in parliament on the conditions on which the UK will leave the EU (the terms of divorce or settling the financial liabilities), which were in any case rejected by parliament (and even by the House of Lords, by 274 votes to 118 votes), do also not make sense. If the other EU 27 member states do not approve those terms and/or the European Parliament does not ratify them (and without the necessary unanimity of member states to extend the negotiations), the EU treaties will automatically cease to apply to the UK at the end of the two-year period. Those are the rules of Article 50 , which was nevertheless triggered by the UK government with an overwhelming support of parliament.
- 26.
That is, whether at the margin benefits are still larger or just equal to heterogeneity costs. On the benefit side, the internal market trade benefits loom large. They are already large, and there is scope for improving the functioning and delivery of economic results of the single market (Europe 2020 strategy, digital single market, energy union), so that the benefits from EU club membership can be significantly enhanced. On the other hand, increasing heterogeneity has made itself felt in various policy areas. To the extent that it undermines trust between member states (on which, for instance, the principle of mutual recognition relies) it also makes decision making more difficult (although countries could trade off benefits across issue areas and various common goods). This is not the case for the UK, however, whose participation in the Union is essentially associated with the single market.
- 27.
As pointed out by Alesina et al. (2017), the main impediment to further European political integration has not been heterogeneity of tastes or of cultural traits, but other cleavages like parochial national identities.
- 28.
Soros (2017) defends a loose and flexible EU at the expense of the Eurozone as its political core and of an ever-closer Union. He goes even further in defending that the EU should grant a special treatment to the UK, in recognition of the fact that Brexit is a step towards disintegration and thus a lose-lose proposition. We argue exactly the opposite, that is, that Brexit facilitates further EU integration.
- 29.
For a discussion of the complex state of differentiated integration in the EU see König (2015). As we argue, it makes a shared identity difficult without a core project.
- 30.
The same did not happen in the case of Greece, where the UK even insisted on guarantees that it would be exempt from loan guarantees granted against the EU budget.
- 31.
This is unlikely to continue after Brexit, as normally these activities should be undertaken inside the regulatory area under the control of the ECB.
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Bongardt, A., Torres, F. (2017). A Qualitative Change in the Process of European Integration. In: da Costa Cabral, N., Renato Gonçalves, J., Cunha Rodrigues, N. (eds) After Brexit. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-66670-9_6
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