Following the UK’s decision to leave the European Union, a great deal of attention has focused on when the country will choose to begin its exit negotiations. Richard Rose writes that there are both pros and cons for the British government in pushing back the negotiations. A delay would allow the government to arrive at a stronger position on what it wishes to achieve from the process, but too long a delay would risk the discussions being complicated by elections in other European countries and prolong divisions within the government over Brexit.
The referendum question was simple but the outcome has produced a sequence of conundrums. The most immediate question – when should the UK formally notify the EU it will leave – has a simple answer in the abstract: When it is ready. It is also strategically critical, because doing so starts a 24-month countdown until the UK ceases to have any rights or obligations of membership. The British government wants to retain a maximum of rights to trade in the single market and a minimum of obligations to accept EU immigrants. The EU will only begin discussing its position once Brexit is officially triggered.
The prime minister’s decision to hold off commencing Brexit negotiations until next year avoids the costly mistake of starting them before the three ministers responsible have office space, staff and, perhaps, resolve their turf wars. It also allows time for clarifying what it means for Britain to take back control from Brussels. But it leaves open for debate the question: Does next year mean January or December?
Notifying departure in January 2017 would remove uncertainties that are already beginning to affect many British-based industries and institutions. It would also reassure anxious Conservative MPs that Theresa May is not procrastinating about delivering what they campaigned for and she did not. However, if the practicalities of post-Brexit relations begin in January, British negotiators will be short on details.
Harold Wilson’s remark – a week is a long time in politics – warns Theresa May of the dangers of waiting a full year, since this multiplies by 52 the risk of unforeseen and unwanted events. The biggest risk is a by election arising in a Tory-held constituency. In such circumstances, the UKIP candidate can appeal for support by asking voters to send a message to Downing Street that Brexit means Brexit sooner rather than later.
Holding off negotiations until spring would increase by half the time available to Whitehall to prepare realistic proposals for negotiation with EU officials and begin preparations for revising the domestic statute book to deal with laws that have depended on the country’s EU membership. French elections in spring are likely to produce a new president who will back British proposals only as and when it is in France’s interest.
Delaying the application for withdrawal until autumn 2017 has domestic and European political costs. If the prime minister has not started moving predictably toward Brexit before then, she will face semi-anonymous briefings against her from pro-Brexit ministers and demands from the Conservative Party conference to get a move on, or else. Explanations backed by expert opinion will invite Brexiters to assert they are wrong, again – just as they were in assuming David Cameron would win his campaign to keep the UK in the EU.
The German election, due in autumn 2017, will place Angela Merkel under attack from a protest party that wants to reduce the influence of the EU on member states. On past form, she will reject such demands. Even if she loses office, alternative leaders are likely to refuse such demands, both on principle and in the light of what happened to David Cameron when he tried to appease Britain’s Eurosceptics.
Delaying the formal launch of exit beyond spring would terminate it at the worst possible time for EU institutions to sign off on an agreement with the British government. The European Parliament (EP), which needs to approve a number of features of any agreement, is up for election in May 2019. Even if its party composition remains unchanged, about half its MEPs will be new to the institution. Committee chairmanships, important for scrutinising details, will be up for grabs too.
A new set of European Commission leaders will be appointed after the EP election; it will take until autumn to confirm their names and responsibilities. The turnover of national heads of government in the European Council will be less dramatic because it occurs gradually. However, any agreement the prime minister strikes with sympathetic national prime ministers could not be confirmed without a full Council vote and the cooperation of the new Commissioners and Parliament.
In autumn 2019 EU institutions will be hesitant to make concessions to British demands for exceptional benefits that might encourage other nations to seek the same. The absence of a binding agreement will trigger a hard Brexit, in which all the existing benefits and obligations of EU membership will cease. Visible costs are likely to come before hoped for benefits. The biggest political cost would come from taking too long to deliver Brexit and leaving the Conservative Party once again divided for the British general election in May 2020.
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Note: This article gives the views of the author, and not the position of EUROPP – European Politics and Policy, nor of the London School of Economics.
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Richard Rose – University of Strathclyde
Richard Rose is a Professor at the University of Strathclyde, the author of Representing Europeans: a Pragmatic Approach (Oxford U. Press, 2015) and a commissioning fund awardee of The UK in a Changing Europe.
A very useful discussion of the options open to the Government, but it seems to assume that when to trigger the Article 50 procedure is entirely in Theresa May’s hands. It may well not be. Many will be aware of the case now going through the Courts that will determine whether or not the the trigger can be exercised under the royal prerogative without Parliamentary authorisation. Article 50 says in effect that to trigger its procedure the notice to be given is notice that the withdrawing Member State has decided to withdraw from the EU “in accordance with its own constitutional requirements”. In practice it is only the Supreme Court – possibly after a reference to the EU Court of Justice – that can settle this: the UK Government on its own cannot. [As an aside, it would be bizarre in the extreme to deny Parliament’s supremacy over the Executive on probably the most important issue the country has faced for decades, especially one that is supposed to let the UK recover democratic control over its affairs from “Brussels”.] This case will be heard at first instance in mid-October, and it is understood that a “leap-frog” appeal directly to the Supreme Court would be heard this coming December. If the latter holds that Parliamentary authorisation is indeed needed, then the House of Lords (and possibly the Commons too) will undoubtedly be in no hurry to give that authorisation without conditions such as a second referendum, or maybe at all, and could even delay proceedings for 12 months under the Parliament Act.
It is also hard to see why the EU negotiators would not stick rigidly to the line advocated by Paul de Grauwe, and force the UK to choose, before even starting negotiations, between either membership of the EEA, and so accepting free movement of labour, or total withdrawal from any association with the EU, and so trading under WTO rules, unless and until a UK/EU trade deal can be agreed, which would probably take many years with all the attendant uncertainty that would entail. The EU has all the cards; it has far less to fear from the clock chipping away at the Article 50 2-year time limit than the UK.
Why not just violate EU law and just refuse payment and article 50 altogether, telling the europeans to pound sand?
Because we need a deal to access the single market? Because we’d be shooting ourselves in the foot? This is the great nationalist delusion you see in every country in the world – the idea that “they need us more than we need them” so we’ll just dictate terms, play hardball, force them to do what we want (etc.) Every nationalist despot has a line of this kind: Alex Salmond was apparently going to have Westminster over a barrel by reneging on Scotland’s share of the national debt.
The problem politicians in power have to face is that they live in the real world, not a nationalist fantasy. We need a good deal, they need a good a deal, so we’ll act like adults and sort out a compromise. The “hardball” option is the exclusive domain of people who spend all day arguing on the internet about subjects they can’t be bothered to think about for five minutes.
Negi – If you advocate the UK just ignoring binding obligations that it freely entered into but now has decided it does not like, you have to accept us all having the same freedom. Great idea: our laws could all be abrogated, and Parliament and the Courts would no longer be needed, as there’d be no point creating laws or enforcing them any more, saving us billions, all of which would no doubt go straight to the NHS – assuming of course that the doctors were still happy to work in it without any contracts at all. Generalissima May would be supreme for ever. What’s not to like?
But if by chance you don’t like, what’s sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander, and the UK as well as everyone else has to behave in a civil and law-abiding manner, especially towards countries we want to have good long term relations with.