The State of the European Union 2017

BREXIT: NEGOTIATING THE UNITED KINGDOM’S WITHDRAWAL FROM THE EUROPEAN UNION

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basic rules that both parties must respect. Based

on the limited statements that EU leaders have

made in this regard, a set of rules with respect

to the withdrawal process is beginning to

emerge, and these would constitute the red

lines for the EU. However, these rules are still far

from comprehensive and will need to be sup-

plemented by the general guidelines which the

European Council will presumably approve in

March 2017.

The rules that, so far, constitute the

acquis

political-legal principles of the withdrawal pro-

cess and that supplement the contents of article

50, are as follows:

1. The negotiations will not start – either for-

mally or informally – until notification has

been received. This is the first of the rules to

emerge from the joint declaration by the

leaders of EU institutions on the day after

the referendum. There has been impressive

unity on this point and, more than six months

after the result, neither institutions nor

member states have given in to pressure

from the UK government to enter into infor-

mal talks or to hold some kind of pre-nego-

tiation to resolve pressing issues such as the

acquired rights of citizens.

2. In the words of Michel Barnier, the

Commission’s chief negotiator for the with-

drawal of the UK, “Being a member of the

EU comes with rights and benefits. Third

countries can never have the same rights

and benefits since they are not subject to the

same obligations”.

In other words, the EU’s

member states and its institutions would ap-

pear to share May’s conviction that “Brexit

means Brexit”. Withdrawal must have real

costs and any status short of membership

Michel Barnier:

Press Briefing, op. cit.

must therefore entail the loss of some ben-

efits. Politically, this is essential for the EU, as

neither the 27 member states nor the EU

institutions can permit Brexit to be an unbri-

dled success. This would merely encourage

the Eurosceptic parties that already threaten

many of the EU’s governments, and could

provoke a stampede.

3. The unity and indivisibility of the four free-

doms: if the UK wants to maintain access to

the Single Market, then it must accept the

free movement of people. This puts an ex-

plicit limit on what is open to negotiation

when defining the future relationship be-

tween the EU and the UK, and rules out the

possibility of cherry-picking.

A timetable also appears to be emerging:

although the Treaty provides for the possibility

of extending the two-year negotiation period,

the European Parliament elections in 2019 im-

pose an implicit limit. It would be politically sui-

cidal for the EU to hold elections without having

already mapped out a clear solution to the exis-

tential crisis represented by Brexit. In order to do

this, negotiations must be completed and the

agreement signed by spring 2019, so that the

European Commission and candidates to the

European Parliament can present themselves to

citizens with a positive plan to revitalise the

European project.

Brexit and the EU of the future: the time

for truth

Brexit heralds the start of a journey into politi-

cally unfamiliar territory, a process that inevita-

bly raises more questions than answers, as it is

the first time that a member state has with-

drawn from the EU. It will be a hugely compli-

cated process because the EU is not only an