The EU will become less monolithic by Charles Grant
The people running the EU have always wanted it to be uniform. True, Britain and Denmark were granted opt-outs from the euro, judicial co-operation and some other areas. But the orthodoxy in Brussels, Berlin and Paris has been that most member-states are committed to the same aims and ambitions, even if some are progressing towards them more quickly than others. Thus Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker said in his State of the Union speech on September 13th that every member-state (bar those with opt-outs) should join the euro, the banking union and the Schengen area. But as the EU navigates the challenges of Brexit, migrant flows, a still-problematic eurozone and a hostile neighbourhood, it will need to become more flexible in order to flourish. To his credit, David Cameron got the point. When he renegotiated the terms of Britain’s membership, he won an opt-out from the treaty commitment to “ever closer union”, plus wording that the treaties should not “compel all member-states to aim for a common destination”. The European Commission disliked that language and, together with the French and German governments, prevented Cameron from pushing further in this direction. In any case, the words agreed in February 2016 had no legal standing after the British referendum. Nevertheless Britain’s vote to leave has helped some policy-makers to recognise that in an EU of 27 members with very different objectives,
not everybody will be comfortable signing up to everything. Indeed, some projects – such as common defence – may work better with a smaller number of more committed countries involved. If governments gained the freedom to opt in or out of certain policies, on a permanent basis, it would weaken the eurosceptic narrative that the EU is an all-powerful juggernaut intent on imposing a uniform model of integration onto an entire continent. Even a federalist government like that of Italy is sympathetic to extending the ideas that Cameron promoted. President Emmanuel Macron wants a more flexible EU. He told his ambassadors on August 29th that they “should contemplate a Europe based on several formats, go further with all those who want to move forward, without being held back by the states that want – and