Foreign policy co-operation: Brexit’s missing link by Luigi Scazzieri
The UK-EU Trade and Co-operation Agreement does not include foreign policy. The UK and its European partners will continue working together bilaterally and in small groups. But this will not make up for the lack of institutionalised UK-EU co-operation. One of the areas not covered by the UK-EU Trade and Co-operation Agreement is foreign and security policy. This will make it harder for the UK and the EU to work together and for the British to influence European foreign policy. The UK government saw the EU’s offer of a partnership similar to those the Union had with other partners as unappealing and rejected a foreign policy agreement. The UK thought that much European foreign and security policy co-operation happened outside of the EU, in NATO, bilaterally or in small groups like the E3 grouping of France, Germany and the UK. At the same time, the EU’s decision to adopt strict rules for non-EU firms wanting to access its newly created European Defence Fund (EDF), combined with scepticism that the EDF would be effective, contributed to persuading the UK government that it would lose little by not having a formal foreign policy agreement with the EU. Since Brexit, the UK has sought to de-emphasise links with the EU, even denying the EU delegation in London the diplomatic privileges it is normally accorded. Britain also sought to underplay Europe as a region, with foreign secretary Dominic Raab talking of a tilt towards the Indo-Pacific. At the same time, the UK has sought to burnish its credentials as a global
power outside the EU. It has increased defence spending by £16 billion over four years, pushed the idea of setting up a ‘D10’ club of democracies to stand up against authoritarianism and tried to show that Britain is nimbler outside the EU. London has pointed to how it was able to sanction the Belarusian regime more quickly and robustly than the EU, and how the UK has been tougher than its European partners towards China on Hong Kong, Huawei and Beijing’s treatment of its Uyghur minority. Nevertheless, the UK continues to have a large stake in European security. It will continue to have to work together with its European partners to address common challenges in Europe’s neighbourhood, and it will want to influence their policies and those of the EU. At the same time, the size of the UK’s defence industrial base, and its important diplomatic and military assets, mean that European member-states will want to maintain as much co-operation with the UK as possible and ensure that cross-Channel divides do not widen. With no formal co-operation agreement, the UK and EU member-states will try to bolster bilateral partnerships. The UK’s forthcoming Integrated Security, Defence and Foreign Policy