In the run-up to the UK referendum on June 23, the EU was divided between optimists and pessimists. The pessimists — the majority — saw Brexit as a huge threat. A British vote to leave would strengthen “centrifugal forces” and could even be the beginning of the end of the union.
The optimists — the minority — saw it as an opportunity. The shock of Brexit could galvanize the EU to move ahead with further integration, especially in areas that the UK had blocked. However, both optimists and pessimists agreed that, if the UK did actually vote to leave, the EU would need to respond.
It has been two months since the referendum, but little has happened beyond declarations of commitment to the future of the European project.
Illustration: Mountain People
The reason for this odd period of apparent inactivity is not just the lull caused by the summer break or even the shock of the British vote to leave the EU. It is also that, although everybody in Europe seems to agree that something must be done to respond to the Brexit vote, no one can seem to agree on what.
While Europeans have watched the chaos that has been British politics over the last two months and waited for the new government to decide what it wanted, there have been plenty of exhortations to see Brexit as a wake-up call.
However, what Europeans are supposed to do if and when they wake up is less clear. Many among Europe’s great and good have urged a new focus on the “essentials” — what is being called the “Europe of necessity.” The EU must deliver for citizens, but how?
Far from lurching toward the superstate that British Euroskeptics always feared, the reality is that the EU is paralyzed by the multiple intersecting fault lines that already existed within it — between creditor and debtor countries, between old and new member states, and between left and right.
This matters for the UK because its negotiation about a new relationship with the EU will be linked to the parallel deals between Europeans on the other areas that matter most to them, in particular economic policy and refugee policy.
At the center of all this, geographically and politically, is Germany. The Brexit vote has thrust Berlin into an even more pivotal position — the future of the EU will now revolve even more tightly around Germany. German politicians are aware that expectations have increased, but so have fears of German power. German politicians talk about “leading from the center,” in other words, to drive policy, but to do so by seeking to find a European consensus.
What this means in practice is a kind of hub-and-spoke Europe in which diplomacy, bilaterally and in groups, centers on Berlin. It began, disastrously, when the German Minister of Foreign Affairs Frank-Walter Steinmeier invited the foreign ministers of the union’s six founding member states to Berlin the weekend after the referendum. The meeting was meant to be a show of European unity, but inevitably alienated other member states.
Since then, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Steinmeier have met other European leaders to prepare for the post-Brexit summit that will take place in Bratislava on Sept. 16. Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi on Monday hosted Merkel and French President Francois Hollande on Ventotene, an island off Naples where, in 1941, two interned anti-fascist activists wrote a famous manifesto calling for a federation of European states.
However, despite all this diplomatic activity centered on Berlin, there is unlikely to be much progress by the time of the summit on the two biggest challenges for the EU: the eurozone and the refugee crisis.
In both cases, the differences, roughly, between north and south in the eurozone and east and west on the refugee crisis, remain as wide as ever. If any initiatives are announced in Bratislava, they are likely to be in other less divisive areas such as better cooperation on counterterrorism and perhaps some small steps in integrating European security and defense policy.
The problem is that this is unlikely to do much to stop the rise of Eurosckpticism, which most recognize is not an exclusively British phenomenon, even if it is more extreme there.
“We must acknowledge that support and passion for our common project has faded over the last decade in parts of our societies,” wrote Steinmeier and his French counterpart, Jean-Marc Ayrault, in a joint paper published shortly after the referendum.
What some see as a necessary response to Euroskepticism, others see as a capitulation to it.
For former Belgian prime minister and president of the Liberal group in the European parliament Guy Verhofstadt, the lesson of former British prime minister David Cameron’s failure to persuade the British population to remain in the EU was that “one cannot defeat nationalism by pandering to nationalists.”
The solution is “more Europe.”
Others see calls to transfer more sovereignty to Brussels as part of the problem rather than the solution.
“Neither a simple call for more Europe nor a phase of mere reflection can be an adequate answer,” Ayrault and Steinmeier wrote in their paper.
Some, including the Dutch and Polish governments, are more interested in devolving power back to the member states.
It is also almost universally recognized that ways must be found to better legitimize European integration. However, this is another mere aspiration. While some want a tighter EU centered on the eurozone, with its own parliament, others want a looser EU based on the idea of “variable geometry” in which national parliaments would play a greater role.
For the first time in the history of European integration, Germany is putting the brakes on. The shift is exemplified by the transformation in the attitude of German Minister of Finance Wolfgang Schauble since his tough treatment of Greece last summer, the most popular politician in the country.
Schauble is generally seen as the most “pro-European” member of Merkel’s Cabinet, but even before the referendum, he said in an interview with Der Spiegel that the EU could not simply react to a British vote to leave the EU with a call for more integration.
German officials increasingly justify positions such as this on the basis of the need for a European consensus — it must occupy a middle ground between different member states. However, this is typically disingenuous.
In reality, there is national politics behind Germany’s opposition to further integration. Euroskepticism is rising in Germany, too, not just among voters who are drifting to the Euroskeptic Alternative fur Deutschland party (AfD), but also in bastions of the establishment, such as the Bundesbank and the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung.
The reality is that while an overwhelming majority of Germans remain committed to the EU, many no longer see further integration as being in the national interest. When France and Italy talk about more “risk sharing” in the eurozone, Germans see this as a stealth attempt to the “transfer union” — in other words, an EU in which the fiscally responsible subsidize the fiscally irresponsible — that they have always feared. With a presidential election in France and a general election in Germany next year, positions are likely to harden over the next 12 months.
This may all seem like the kind of arcane drama from which Britain voted on June 23 to liberate itself. However, whether Britons like it or not, it will inform the way the EU negotiates with the UK.
Behind the European Commission’s negotiating position will be member states concerned about Euroskepticism at home. It is the fear of empowering the National Front in France and the AfD in Germany, rather than a desire to “punish” Britain, which is behind the reluctance to give the UK the “best of both worlds” that it wants.
Merkel seems, for now, to have prevailed with her patient approach to Brexit; as the reality set in that there was nothing anyone could do to make the UK invoke Article 50, the calls for the UK to “go quickly” largely stopped. Informal negotiations even seem to be taking place despite the initial Brussels mantra of “no negotiation before notification.”
However, two months on from the referendum, the answer to the big question — will the UK be able to negotiate access to the single market, particularly for services, while restricting immigration from the EU — remains unclear.
Last week, Germany’s European affairs minister indicated Britain could be given a “special status.” To British ears, that might sound like the best of both worlds — perhaps the access to the single market that comes with European Economic Area membership, together with the ability to restrict immigration that comes with a looser trade agreement.
Whether that turns out to be wishful thinking will depend on the domestic political pressures on Europe’s leaders and the negotiation between them about the future of the EU “at 27.”
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