Insight
Europe without the UK: Liberated or diminished? by Sophia Besch, Ian Bond, Agata Gostyńska-Jakubowska, Camino Mortera-Martinez and Sam Lowe 13 March 2019
In 2016 the CER made ten predictions about the effect of Brexit on future EU policy. How do they stand up now, on the eve of the UK’s departure? In April 2016, the CER published ‘Europe after Brexit: Unleashed or undone’, trying to predict how the EU would evolve if the UK voted to leave the Union. Since then, the EU has had to respond not only to the Brexit vote but to the election of Donald Trump as US president and an increasingly assertive China. Internally, the EU has seen the continued rise of populist, eurosceptic forces; a slow-down in the eurozone economy; and disagreements between leading member-states over the future direction of the Union. Though the next steps on Brexit and the future UK-EU relationship remain uncertain, we have learned enough over the last three years to evaluate and update the ten predictions we made in that report. 1. Even without the UK, the consensus for liberalising the internal market in goods, services and labour will endure. The signs are that deepening of the single market will continue, with a focus on the digital market. Though integrating services markets would be a big prize, the opposition of national regulators and professional bodies is likely to prevent progress, especially without the UK’s influence. France and Germany, which have not always supported liberalisation, will have proportionately more weight post-Brexit. There are indications, however, that countries that champion the single market have realised that they need to fill the gap left by the UK’s departure: at the initiative of the Finnish prime minister, Juha Sipilä, 17 heads of state or government wrote to European Council president Donald Tusk setting out their priorities for deepening the single market over the next five years. EU competition policy will probably change post-Brexit. France and Germany have proposed that it should take greater account of competition from US and Chinese corporate giants, and facilitate, rather than obstruct, the creation of pan-European champions able to compete with them. This interventionist approach has long been viewed with scepticism by the UK. The Commission and pro-liberalisation states will resist, but without the UK they will probably lose. CER INSIGHT: Europe without the UK: Liberated or diminished? 13 March 2019 info@cer.EU | WWW.CER.EU
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