The State of the European Union. The European Parliament faces its most important elections yet

THE STATE OF THE EUROPEAN UNION 120 build solid coalitions around its agendas as a fully-fledged member of the Union, all of its ef- forts during the process to negotiate bilaterally with its former colleagues came to nought. It has become ever more apparent that the EU’s 27 remaining members clearly consider protecting the Union and preserving its legal in- tegrity and political independence to be their top priority and that a UK with one foot out of the door has little or nothing to offer them. Equally noteworthy is the solidarity with Ireland expressed by fellow Member States, which have fiercely defended that country’s interest in main- taining an open border between itself and Northern Ireland by means of the much-debat- ed backstop. Negotiations between the EU and the United Kingdom accelerated in the fall of 2018 with an eye to closing a deal by an October deadline previously set to provide sufficient time for the Withdrawal Agreement to be ratified by both the European Parliament and the UK. 10 This oc- curred amidst rustlings concerning the need to stipulate a time frame that, in the case the rati- fication process in the UK proved to be rocky, afforded the Union the breathing room it need- ed to organise a unilateral response to the pos- sibility of the UK “crashing out” of the EU with- out a deal in place. On 25 November 2018, following several days of marathon negotiations and a moment of tension sparked by possibility that Spain might veto the agreement over wording regarding the 10  Upon the failure of the two sides to reach a consensus on the Withdrawal Agreement, a decision was made in Oc- tober to delay the formal approval of the outcome of the Brexit negotiations until a special summit meeting of the European Council to be convened at a future date, which was finally held on 25 November 2018. future of Gibraltar, 11 the European Council ap- proved the Withdrawal Agreement and the cor- responding Political Declaration previously agreed to by the negotiating teams of both sides. 12 This landmark action would be followed by a tortuous period of debate and disagree- ment during which Teresa May fought tooth and nail to secure the British parliament’s ap- proval of the deal she had struck with European negotiators. Agreement on the withdrawal of the United Kingdom from the UE The first victory achieved by the European nego- tiating team was the division of the overall ne- gotiation into two neat phases, the first of which was to be devoted exclusively to the legal conditions of withdrawal and the second of 11  Spain raised concerns regarding the wording of Article 184 in the final draft of the Withdrawal Agreement related to the negotiation of the future relationship, which did not contain an express reference to Member States playing a decision-making role as specified in the European Council guidelines of April 2017. This omission was perceived as preventing Spain from having the final word over Gibraltar. The issue was resolved by means of a political declaration that recognised the need for Spain to approve any and all regulation applicable to Gibraltar. It should be noted that such a clarification was not really necessary given that the Agreement of a Future Relationship is a “mixed” agree- ment requiring the unanimous approval of, and the indi- vidual ratification by, all Member States. Moreover, Spain and the United Kingdom negotiated four complementary bilateral Memoranda of Understanding on Gibraltar, signed on 29 November 2018, dealing with issues of common in- terest such as citizen’s rights, tobacco and other products, the environment and and police and judicial cooperation. Concerning this question, See: Andrés Sáenz de Santa María, P. e Izquierdo Sans, C.: “Gibraltar y el acuerdo de retirada: claves de interpretación”, La Ley Unión Europea, n.º 68, December 2018. 12  European Council (Art. 50): Conclusions of special meet- ing of the European Council, Brussels, 25 November 2018 (EUCO XT 20015/18).