The Brexit equation: EU minus UK = ? by Ian Bond
Most discussions of the UK’s possible exit from the EU focus on what Britain would be like afterwards: whether it could trade more freely with the world, escape EU regulations and reduce immigration. Equally important, however, is what the EU would be like afterwards; and how in turn this might affect post-Brexit relations between the UK and the EU. Former EU legal adviser Jean-Claude Piris set out seven possible models for this relationship in his recent policy brief for the CER, ‘If the UK votes to leave: The seven alternatives to EU membership’. He concentrated mainly on the UK’s urgent need to have continued access to the single market. If Britain left the EU it would have to negotiate a trade agreement with a group that had just lost one of its more economically liberal members. The gap between the laissez-faire British and the dirigiste continentals is smaller than the British imagine, as John Springford showed in ‘Will the eurozone gang up on Britain?’ But the biggest question is whether the EU would be willing to give the UK the market access it currently enjoys – and whether, over time, the market might become more closed to non-EU countries. The UK has consistently pushed for an open EU – especially in financial services, since the City of London is a global financial centre, not just a European one. Without the UK, would any other member-state resist ECB pressure to confine euro clearing to the eurozone, for example? The centre of gravity in the EU would shift in areas other than the single market, however,
including justice and home affairs (JHA), and foreign and defence policy. Though the UK is often caricatured as Europe’s perpetual naysayer, the reality is more nuanced. In some areas the UK has indeed been the main obstacle to European co-operation, but in others it has actively promoted it. The EU minus Britain would not automatically become the federal state that eurosceptics fear, but it might not reflect UK preferences as closely as it now does. In the Justice and Home Affairs area, the UK’s opt-in means that it is already less than a full partner. It has, however, opted in case-by-case to important JHA measures including Europol and the European Arrest Warrant (EAW). The UK has actively employed the EAW, submitting more than a thousand requests to other member-states from 2010-14. Once outside the EU, the UK would have to negotiate a bilateral extradition agreement with the Union, or individual bilateral agreements with each of the EU’s 27 member-states. If the UK were also to reject the European Convention on Human Rights, however, as a result of the government’s proposed ‘British Bill of Rights’, would all EU member-states be able to extradite suspects to