Plans for the UK to re-establish formal foreign and security policy links with the European Union, frozen during negotiations on a trade agreement, may never be revived as the UK’s foreign policy focuses on bilateral links in Europe and the development of new alliances in the Indo Pacific and the Middle East.
The freeze marks a little-discussed shift in thinking from the Theresa May era, when the political statement at the time of Britain’s withdrawal spoke of negotiating deep cooperation between the UK and the EU.
May herself said at the Munich security conference in 2018: “Europe’s security is our security, and the United Kingdom is unconditionally committed to maintaining it. The challenge for all of us today is to find a way to work together, through a deep and special partnership between the UK and the EU, to maintain the cooperation we have built and go further in addressing the evolving threats we face together. “
The EU has even published proposals on how such cooperation can work in detail, but the UK has not yet accepted the ideas.
The move to the UK in the May era was not formally announced on either side and its implications have been little discussed.
For the EU, when trying to integrate its own foreign policy, the fear must be that Britain may undermine its foreign policy rules, just as it fears that the United Kingdom will differ in trade standards. But diplomats in Britain believe the post-Brexit UK has already shown independence of judgment and standing agility, compared to the EU, where complicated decision-making requires all 27 EU foreign ministers to agree. The disadvantages of avoiding the EU’s foreign policy are undetectable for conservative Eurosceptics.
Therefore, in the past year, the UK has cooperated with the EU on a strictly ad hoc basis, often going its own way on issues such as sanctions. For example, in the case of Belarus, the United Kingdom (with Canada) issued sanctions against the Minsk regime before the EU (and the US) agreed to its packages. The EU and the US appear to have coordinated their respective measures, but the EU’s measures were then blocked and postponed by the Cyprus veto threat.
In contrast, the response to the poisoning of Russian dissident Alexei Navalny led to close coordination by the EU and the UK, following the 2018 Skripal case project.
In the case of Turkish drilling to obtain gas in the eastern Mediterranean, the EU introduced some sanctions and may arrest more in March, while Britain fell silent, not wanting to offend either side. As France and Turkey exchanged insults and Germany mediated, the United Kingdom outside the EU was free to step aside, perhaps thinking about the trade deal it seeks with Turkey.
In Libya, where the United Kingdom was instrumental in the 2011 revolution, it recently stood on the sidelines, watching the EU protest against violations of the UN arms embargo by Turkey and leaving the EU to police migrants crossing the Mediterranean to Spain and Italy. On some issues, the past year has shown an advantage in diplomatic discretion.
The main European forum in which the United Kingdom operates remains E3 – Germany, France and the United Kingdom. Here, at least in public, Europe’s major powers remained closed in the nuclear deal with Iran, resisting pressure from the US to declare the deal broken and put Iran’s nuclear non-compliance even further in the dispute resolution mechanism, a means by which the agreement could be declared dead.
E3 has also increasingly coordinated on Iran’s human rights violations and, as political director, has discussed broader issues, including Russia. But in Ukraine, only the UK offered a political and defense partnership with Kiev.
Overall, the EU’s plans for institutionalized cooperation seem dead, or at least asleep. Rosa Balfour, director of Carnegie Europe, writing in a pamphlet from the foreign policy center, suggests: “The EU needs to renounce, for now, the hope that the United Kingdom will participate in any institutionalized agreement. The British government’s foreign policy is conducted ideologically; EU action is strongly process-oriented. The difference between the two is one of the causes of Brexit. “
UK diplomats look at the foreign policy agenda of Josep Borrell, the EU’s representative for foreign affairs and security policy, and step back. His call for greater foreign policy majority voting through “constructive abstention” and for the EU to use the language of power is not attractive to the UK. Similarly, for British eyes, the contrast between Emmanuel Macron’s call for a united and stronger Europe and the unilateral formulation of French foreign policy reveals the farce of integrated foreign policy.
In fact, the EU’s foreign policy often looks like a coalition of reluctants. But some policymakers say the EU-UK foreign policy debate will be rekindled, at least because of three deep countervailing forces.
The mundane reality may lead the UK to realize that the impact of its foreign policy is multiplied if it works with the EU. The Biden government also prefers the UK not to be freelancing, if doing so weakens the EU. Finally, the EU will slowly integrate its defense arm and has already defined a form of participation by third parties, such as the United Kingdom.
Ian Bond of the Center for European Reform can see three ways in which the UK and the EU can collaborate formally: in the exchange and protection of classified information, the participation of UK personnel in defense missions and operations and the participation of the United Kingdom in defense industrial cooperation through the European Defense Agency.
But it may be necessary to calm the dust of tense trade negotiations and a little push from Biden to get those discussions started.