Rituals of democratic renewal can create possibilities out of previous dead ends. With a new government in the UK and a newly elected European Commission, many are hoping for a new era of collaboration between the two political entities.
Labour’s desire for closer relations is evident, despite clear red lines preventing it from joining the EU’s single market and customs union. So is its hope that growing geopolitical uncertainties have made EU leaders more open-minded.
Labour’s red lines are very different from those of previous governments and reflect a pragmatic rather than ideological view of sovereignty. Chancellor Rachel Reeves sophism That no one “voted for Brexit because they were unhappy that chemicals regulations were the same across Europe” was not an afterthought.
The new approach is evident in the information notes on a product safety bill that “will allow us to take a sovereign decision to reflect… updated EU rules”. Let us again welcome the “dynamic alignment” that once caused so much drama in the “star chambers” and grassroots Tory MP groups.
The notes also suggest aligning, where sensible, Britain’s standards with those of the EU that apply in Northern Ireland – in effect, Theresa May’s idea of a limited regulatory union to avoid trade barriers within the UK.
All this leaves several options open to the public: an agreement on veterinary and food standards, common tariffs on energy and carbon trade, and a merger of emissions trading systems. Each of these would provide a valuable reduction in current or imminent trade costs. The EU should find them acceptable once the UK is prepared to align itself dynamically, including with rulings from the European Court of Justice on the matter.
But this will only improve trade frictions at the margins: less paperwork in a few sectors, but There is no absence of border controlsTo restore anything resembling ease of economic exchange between EU members, either the UK would have to join the European Economic Area (EEA), or the EU would have to create a new deep integration structure tailor-made for the UK.
That is not what Sir Keir Starmer’s government appears to be seeking. Its calls for a “structured dialogue” mean, at most, regular summits and occasional invitations for British ministers to sit in on EU Council meetings as observers. EU diplomats say Summits make “perfect sense”: the bloc holds them with other countries and groups, but it is easy to admit that this is partly because they produce very few results.
Obviously, it is better to talk regularly than not at all. In matters of defence and security, where Brussels has a small, though growing, role in relation to national capitals, it is possible to imagine decision-making that includes the United Kingdom. Indeed, a meeting of the defence ministers of the Franco-German-British “E3” occurred even during the contentious post-Brexit trade negotiations of 2020.
London is investing time and effort in building a good relationship with the EU. “It is about creating a climate, an atmosphere. I don’t think we should downplay that,” says Nick Thomas-Symonds, Starmer’s EU envoy.
But there is no need to exaggerate. Few major transformations in the EU have occurred simply because leaders wanted them. New forms of integration have rather emerged from leaders who have given up resistance to what economic logic demanded and which Brussels has patiently pushed through.
The single market can has had its greatest champion Margaret Thatcher, but she had the integration-hungry Jacques Delors commission to work on. The single currency was on the drawing board for decades before the free movement of capital helped overcome governments’ scepticism. The post-pandemic recovery fund had its parents in the Spanish, German and French capitals, but the EU’s more federally-inclined institutions had long been eager for common borrowing.
What equivalent economic logic, with long-term support in Brussels, exists for creating a new berth for Britain? There is the EEA (Delors’ construction to allow non-EU members to join the EU market), but London doesn’t want it because it allows economically self-sufficient people to emigrate freely.
But we could imagine a subset of the single market, exclusively for trade in goods, extended beyond the EU, as the Windsor framework does in Northern Ireland or the EEA for the four economic freedoms. The prize is big: removing all border controls except those on rules of origin.
Both sides would have to change their entrenched views. London would have to adopt systematic rather than ad hoc rules. The EU would have to regard its structures as strategic assets and abandon the theology of the four inseparable freedoms of the single market. It must actively want to bind others into its goods-regulating orbit, and the UK must want to be bound to it. Only then would broken links begin to be restored.