The State of the European Union. The European states facing the reforms of the Union

THE STATE OF THE EUROPEAN UNION

4. Preserving the Union’s autonomy as regards

its decision-making as well as the compe-

tence of the Court of Justice of the European

Union. This principle reflected the need to

maintain the unity and integrity of EU and

avoid concessions that might allow a third

country to rupture that cohesion. Negotiators

were particularly anxious to prevent non-

Member States from playing a role in institu-

tional decision-making processes and to pre-

serve the EU Court of Justice’s monopoly on

the interpretation and application of EU law.

These principles, which appeared in the ne-

gotiation guidelines approved by the Council on

22 May 2017, formed the basis of the EU nego-

tiator’s mandate

. Each laid out in detail the is-

sues to be covered in the negotiation agenda

and that needed to be addressed on the final

withdrawal treaty.

European institutions were thus prepared to

begin the phase I of the negotiations. This

would nevertheless happen later than expected

due to Teresa May’s decision to call a snap gen-

eral election on 8 June 2017 in a bid to strength-

en her political position at home before em-

barking upon negotiations. May, who was

picked by her party to be Prime Minister in July

2016 following the resignation of David

Cameron, saw an early election as a means of

gaining a healthy majority in the House of

Commons in favour of withdrawal and shoring

up her negotiating position with the EU. Her in-

tentions were frustrated by the results, which

left her short of a parliamentary majority, forced

her to form a minority government with the

support of the Northern Ireland Democratic

Council of the European Union,

Annex of Council de-

cision (UE, Euratom) 2017/... authorising the opening of

negotiations with the United Kingdom of Great Britain…,

op. cit.

Unionist Party and substantially weakened her

government’s negotiating position with the

British Parliament and the EU alike

Withdrawal negotiations, which did not get

officially underway until July 2017, began with

a series of four-day sessions held in Brussels

spaced approximately a month apart. First on

the agenda were issues related to withdrawal

that the European Council had determined

needed to be addressed during phase I, which

included the rights of EU citizens in the UK and

UK citizens in the EU, the settlement of out-

standing financial commitments assumed by

the UK as a member of the EU (popularly re-

ferred to as the “Brexit bill”), the future status

of the border between Ireland and Northern

Ireland, the governance of the agreement and a

range of other technical matters. It was estab-

lished that the European Council would assess

what had been achieved during these sessions

in October and decide whether to give the

green light to move on to phase II of the nego-

tiations on the basis of progress made.

Negotiations conducted that summer and

fall produced little in the way of progress but a

fair amount of mutual sniping consisting mainly

of European charges that British negotiators

had come to the table unprepared and British

counter charges of European inflexibility.

Theresa May attempted to break the deadlock

by giving a speech in Florence in September

meant

to provide new impulse for the process

Under May’s leadership, the Conservative Party won 318

of the 650 seats contested, 12 fewer than it had won in

the previous general election held in 2015. Having lost her

absolute majority, in order to remain Prime Minister, May

was forced to strike an agreement on 26 June 2017 with

the Democratic Unionist Party of Northern Ireland, which

supported a “hard Brexit” solution.

May, T.:,

A New Era of Cooperation and Partnership be-

tween the UK and the EU,

Florence, 22 September 2017.