It is a salutary reflection on the state of relations between the UK and the European Union that Monday’s summit in London will be the first meeting at this level since this country completed its departure from the EU. As such, it is to be welcomed as evidence of a new willingness by both sides to re-engage, if not necessarily of a warmer mood.
Advance billing suggests a determination on the UK side at least to put on a good show, with lunch on board a warship in the Thames and a signing ceremony at Downing Street. But stage management has a habit of being in inverse proportion to substance. The proof of progress – and how much – will be in the detail of what is signed. That negotiations extended into the 11th hour could be a good sign, or not.
The lunch in a naval setting is a clue as to the likely centrality of defence and security in any post-Brexit thaw. This area always looked like the most fruitful way back to meaningful cooperation with the EU, given the UK’s relative military strength and its role as the third largest contributor to Nato. The EU rose to the challenge of the Ukraine war with a new sense of solidarity and an acceptance that defence had to rise up its agenda as a matter of urgency. This brought the EU and the UK conceptually closer than they had long been, and the return of Donald Trump to the White House only reinforced the message that Europe will have to rely more on itself for its own defence.
The UK undoubtedly has valuable assets to offer here, and an agreement on a UK-EU defence and security partnership is among the agreements expected to be concluded in London. For all the ringing endorsement of Ukraine, however, cooperation elsewhere has not been, and may not be, plain sailing. The EU recently barred access for the UK to its joint defence procurement scheme and the UK’s close defence alignment with the US, including for procurement, could be a complicating factor in closer UK-EU security relations. A key question is how far any defence partnership with the EU will be of immediate practical use, and how far it is merely a statement of intent.
There are hopes, that we share, of some practical advances on other fronts. One, very elementary, measure, but none the worse for that, would be a reciprocal agreement for UK and EU passport-holders to use e-gates when entering each other’s countries. Of principal advantage to UK holidaymakers, who often find themselves waiting in what seem interminable queues at European airports, that would be a welcome start to improving overall relations.
In a similar vein, we hope that the long-discussed youth mobility scheme might actually come into being. Why this government seemed as hostile to such a scheme as its Conservative predecessors was hard to comprehend. Was it so difficult to present the clear differences between this sort of scheme – allowing young Britons and Europeans to work and study in each other’s countries for a limited time – from pre-Brexit “freedom of movement”? If so, it should not have been. As a token of a rapprochement between the UK and the EU, such an agreement could hardly be bettered – with the bonus of potentially improving mutual understanding into the future. If such an agreement is not ready for signing in London, the response should be “why not?” Is Labour really running so scared of the Reform Party that it allows the Farage-ists to set its agenda?
There are other sources of Brexit-related inconveniences (and worse) that should also be rectified, although ministers have appeared to play down expectations. Making it easier for UK musicians and other performers to tour in the EU would be an obvious place to start, along with mutual recognition of professional qualifications.
Of the bigger-picture items, a reduction in the red tape needed for food exports to the EU would be top of the list, helping to increase UK exports, simplifying arrangements relating to Northern Ireland, and reducing waste. The difficulties here, which include commitments to embrace some EU regulation, having no say in any changes in standards the EU were to make, and the argument that one of the (few) benefits to the UK from Brexit was supposed to be the commercial advantage that potentially accrued from being outside EU regulation, may mean that any agreement here has to wait – although it must be hoped not for too long.
Any rapprochement with the EU on regulatory matters, as on defence, however, could quite quickly come up against the demands of the UK’s “special relationship” with the United States. Adhering to EU food standards could block acceptance of some US imports. The trade agreement recently reached with the US related largely to tariffs; anything more ambitious, whether on food, tax or data, could entail some delicate navigation of a gap between the two sides of the Atlantic that will not be easy to bridge, with the risk that the UK finds itself unable to advance on wider trade agreements with either the US or the EU.
So while this first UK-EU summit since Brexit is an undoubted step forward, each small advance cannot but be a reminder of the benefits – in administrative simplicity, financial cost and sheer human goodwill – that we lost when we left the EU. If the results of this meeting exceed the conspicuously modest expectations, that will be a plus, but there is still a lot further to go.
