When British Prime Minister Theresa May takes part in her first European Union summit on Thursday and Friday of this week she will be aware that the 27 other EU member states have been moving more swiftly than the UK in preparing for the Brexit negotiations.
Moreover, they have done so without, so far, the unseemly squabbling between Remainers and Brexiteers in both Mrs May’s Cabinet and her party which has exposed publicly divisions in her government, weakening her negotiating position.
Donald Tusk, the Polish President of the European Council, a body consisting of the EU’s 28 heads of state or government, took a tough line on 13 October, saying that the United Kingdom was facing a “hard Brexit” or “no Brexit.”
He could hardly have done so without at least informal support from the governments of the most influential EU member states, especially Germany and France. He did not encounter any public dissent from the government leaders he represents. But he and the EU’s other leaders know that keeping dissension to a minimum will be a challenge for them too.
Still, it is not just rhetorically that the EU has taken the lead in the Brexit negotiations. Key appointments of many of the EU officials and experts who will be directly involved in the negotiations are also already in place.
On 27 July, just five weeks after the UK’s referendum, Jean-Claude Juncker, the Commission President, named Michel Barnier as the Commission’s chief negotiator. Barnier is swiftly assembling a taskforce of 25-30 people.
These include experts in trade negotiations, a field in which the UK lacks expertise since trade talks are an EU prerogative and led by the Commission, and also, for example, in the EU multi-year budget. Disentangling the UK’s financial commitments in Europe promises to be one of the most convoluted areas of the divorce settlement.
Barnier, a Frenchman by birth, knows Juncker well. They have both been Brussels insiders for years. Barnier was briefly a former member of the European Parliament and is popular with even its more austere members. He also has long experience of navigating the complex geography of the EU’s governing institutions: the Council, the Commission, and the Parliament.
Significantly, he is a former Commissioner for regional policy and for financial market issues, a vital field given the importance of the City of London to the UK.
Barnier already has a head start over the person who will lead the British negotiations, David Davis. Some are asking, quietly, whether two such temperamentally and politically contrasting characters will find it easy to work cooperatively together, which they must if the talks are to go relatively smoothly.
Like Juncker, Barnier is not seen as somebody who enjoys digging into details if he can avoid it. But, just as Juncker has in his chief-of-staff Martin Selmayer, an official who relishes this task, so Barnier’s choice of Sabine Weyand as his Deputy is seen to be a shrewd step to cover a potential weakness.
Given the Commission’s expertise, resources and its normally proactive role in Brussels, it will tend to dominate the negotiations. But Martin Schulz, President of the European Parliament President, formally a co-legislator with the European Council, is making it clear the Parliament intends to elbow its way into the talks, not just wait to vote on their outcome.
It has appointed as its own, unofficial, “negotiator” Guy Verhofstadt, a Liberal party member and a fierce European federalist. When Tony Blair was prime minister, the UK helped to block Verhofstadt’s ambition to become Commission President, a move he will not have forgotten.
Bluntly, it is hard to see British diplomats finding it easy to rally support for their Brexit positions with either the Commission or the Parliament. Rather, the UK will have to work hard with the leaders of the other 27 member states and the Council if it wants to bring pressure to bear outside the formal negotiations.
Mrs May is already finding out that here, too, she is not off to a flying start, with her trade negotiator Liam Fox in particular, foolishly picking unnecessary fights even before the talks have started.
The UK has some catching up to do.
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Edited by Michael Prest
‘May gets tough with EU’ – Express.
Ms May’s own performance is not positioning her well for negotiations. She has announced that she will use her scheduled intervention at the EU summit tonight (item 17 on the agenda!) to tell colleagues that we REALLY will be leaving. Brexit means business, Brexit means exit, Brexit means the lady is not for U turning, etc. etc. They could perfectly well ask her in return whether this is any more than a negotiating position, since she is already refusing to show her cards to her own Parliament. If they really want to tease, they could ask if she is even sure she has a majority in her own Parliament for an A50. And of course they could ask why, if she is so convinced that a Brexit will be the right choice for her country, she is so anxious at his stage to rule out other options for ever.
If it were not all so very tragic for the nation as a whole, it would be a farce.
Neil, the whole Brexit issue has been a farce from the moment the polls closed and got worse as time ticked away. Donald Tusk stating that it is either going to be a hard Brexit or no Brexit is in fact venting an increasing sense of irritation with the clowning and lack of realism that colours the British position.