Article 50 negotiations: a Future Story line
Having some experience of the culture and working of Brussels, I thought it might be useful to explain what it might be like over the period to leaving the EU.
I start by assuming that the PM, whoever she may(sic) be will invoke article 50 in January 2017. By that stage there may be a serious crisis in Italian Banks ( it's already happening), so Brexit isn't at the top of Brussels priorities. It will be received warmly and there will be promises to work closely and blah de blah diplomatic words about making it work. The Commission will ask for a draft set of proposals from the UK which the Parliament, the Council of Ministers and the Commission will discuss and some of the member states will want to take to their own parliaments.
The UK government will struggle to provide a united front given the complexities of putting together the various promises in a way that gets support across the governing party. For instance, single market or no, free movement or no, financial services? European Investment Bank? Existing EU funded projects? Higher Education?
Somehow something will be cobbled together for 31st January which leaves a lot of the governing party unsatisfied and industry lobbying furiously and threats of moving out of UK if this is what happens.
The commission promises to discuss this and come back in due course. It first goes to the Council of Ministers without UK present. When it goes to the Parliament the Irish MEPs will demand changes and others will be unhappy but there is no agreement in the parliament on the way forward.
There will be no formal talks while this is happening but a lot of corridor meetings between UK officials and various actors in Brussels and Strasbourg.
At the end of April the Commission will come back and turn down every part of the UK proposal with explanations in legalese. In particular the Commission will refuse to open trade discussions till after the UK leaves the EU, citing WTO rules.
The UK government will be angry at Brussels intransigence and seek to work out what wriggle room they have. Meanwhile tensions in the UK over what the deal should be are still festering.
Add to this the elections in France and Germany. I would expect a change of government in at least one country with the usual hiatus as deals are stitched together for coalitions and ministerial appointments. The UK currently will hold the EU Presidency in this period, so I expect that will be waived or it could become acrimonious.
The UK makes some minor concessions but sticks to its guns on most of what has been turned down.
When the Council of Ministers meets with new members, some of the original UK proposition is more acceptable to say France or Germany, but the modified proposals are not. Around October 2017 with an impasse a number of joint working groups will be set up for each of the individual strands such as agriculture, European Investment Bank, Regional Policy, Health, Police etc. There could be 20 working groups looking at the range of issues to be considered.
These will meet but after 2-3 months only 1 or 2 have draft proposals to send to the relevant parties.
By the end of December 2017, 1 of the 2 years will have gone and there will be no clear picture of what is on offer or what is acceptable to either party.
Around April 2018, all the groups will have proposals that need to go to the various actors in the EU and the member states.
By June 2018 all the parties will have different and incompatible requests for alterations.
This leaves 2 alternatives:
1. Ask for an extension of the period, but that requires all EU states to agree to that extension. It only takes 1 to veto.
2. Cobble together an agreement to meet the deadline.
Meanwhile, back in Westminster, MPs are getting deeply frustrated that they have been side lined and after 18 months still don't know when and on what they will be asked to vote.
Let us assume that some sort of minimal deal is cobbled together by the end of September. When it goes to Parliament, the Northern Ireland MPs and Scots vote it down. The government and Labour are both split.
With by elections at home the government majority may have been reduced to a single digit lead. If the 2015 electoral fraud allegations cause judicial action, that is another complicating factor.
So with 3 months left there is no agreement, so a vote is asked for by UK to extend the period. Ireland will veto unless conditions are met on the border/. Other may also threaten a veto if their cases are not considered.
In November 2018, there is no deal acceptable to Parliament and the conditions raised against the threats of veto are unacceptable to the UK Government.
In January 2019, the UK will leave the EU without an agreement. Negotiations will continue but with UK as a former member. Any internal crisis management or major issues will take EU priority not the UK.
The UK will now be trading with the world on WTO terms and free to negotiate trade deals. The rights and responsibilities of EU membership will lapse, such as freedom of movement. The UK can make unilateral promises to EU citizens in the UK but cannot guarantee rights of UK citizens living in the EU.
Areas such as R&D, access to education, agriculture, regional development funding etc will stop but UK will no longer be contributing to EU budget. Only once the negotiations are complete on these matters will the picture be clearer. Some may be a matter of months, but others may take 1 to 5 years. I expect Finance will be a particularly problematic issue for Eurozone countries.The UK Financial Passport will be lost till the agreement is in place. UK recipients of EU funding will have been lobbying hard to secure replacement funding, but the mechanisms to replace the current systems are not yet in place and given the negotiations the government is fairly paralysed because it doesn't know what to set up.
Some may see this as evidence of the sanity of leaving the EU. Others may see this description as another example of Project Fear.
Personally, looking at the process behind the Maastricht and Lisbon treaties, I think this is a realistic outline. The economic and political impacts at home against this type of scenario are for another day.
I have spelled out my view. If someone has a similar story to tell whereby the deal is done amicably and on time, my challenge is spell it out at least in the detail I have.
The news re Scotland will undoubtedly be followed by NI and Wales. I tweeted yesterday that it's called Article 50 because it will take the UK 50 years to get a majority view on what type of "Brexit means Brexit" we want. Thanks for comment
Member University Advisory Board at UPES Dehradun, Uttarakhand, India.
8 年There will be a move to prevent the signing of article 50 until the deal has been negotiated and this will be rejected by the European Union which will argue that article 50 has to be signed first before any negotiation take place. From the British point of view this will be suicidal and we'll come to an impasse . As there is no mandate for Brexit in that only 36% of the total electorate voted to leave, there is an argument for a second referendum definitions of terms of reference. If Article 50 does get signed and Britain leaves, trading on an EEC basis means that EU Law is obeyed. This includes Free movement. These are conditions that apply to Norway and Switzerland. We always did control our borders anyway as be were exempt Schering. In the end we will be ejected if A50 signed with no agreement. That's why it won't be signed. The UK will be deceived again and the Goverentire will fall.
Manager, Special Projects, at Carnegie Corporation of New York
8 年Spot on until you get to "some sort of deal has been cobbled together" in September-November '18. At that point with the Sword of Damocles hanging over the Conservative Party (i.e. having to fight the 2020 GE in the midst of a massive crisis they undeniably caused) they will ram whatever the deal is through the Commons with a three-line whip and dare Labour to try to vote it down. More Labour MPs don't want to be tarred with leading the country off a cliff than Tory MPs want to be able to say I told you so. A fudge about the Irish border will already be included, because nobody actually has a reason to oppose one. There will then be another decade or more of negotiations to fine-tune everything without the deadline. These will get very, very bloody in the aftermath of the 2020 General Election, and even worse whenever there's a Eurozone crisis.
Consultant in online learning and OER - all sectors - policy, quality, benchmarking, competitor research, due diligence
8 年We need more time for tempers to cool, bruises to heal and some common sense to surface - like in the universities which this week (as opposed to last) are beginning to plan. To me the referendum result is less monolithic - it states that England and Wales wanted to "leave". My own ideas involve a combined Isle of Man+pestiferous approach. In summary (and I have more details) this goes along the lines of never invoking Article 50 but using the device of amending internal UK structures and then having to amend some Protocols (done quite often, eg re Cyprus a few years ago) so that England and Wales (but not London, Scotland and Northern Ireland - and Gibraltar) are exempt from the EU strictures causing the most voter irritation in E&W (freedom of movement especially) - but we amend UK structures FIRST. The pestiferous aspect is that the UK always plays far too nice and law-abiding in EU (cf. Cameron "negotiations"): we need to look much more at our true geopolitical power, not just economic, re Europe and how much we can get away with within EU (3% deficit rules, anyone?) Think the opposite of goldplating. This may also involve changing some cherished UK approaches to how we organise things. This whole process would take longer, I admit, but takes us into the era of what John Hesketh is talking about - a reconstructed EU. It seems like a lot of work but this time the work is under UK control and most changes would be useful in any scenario. We also need to closely police the next few years towards exit (if actual exit ever occurs) to make sure that in the interim EU gives us our fair share of returns given that we continue to put the same moneys in for at least two more years from now. (H2020 and Erasmus+ panels, procedures and reviewers are topical aspects for UK universities.) UK is not used to doing this either, unlike some other member states. And until we (the government, fully "authorised" - separate discussion) say the UK is leaving, we are not leaving and want full value from our membership fees. As many have said, the referendum is advisory - even if the EU routinely panics at every single adverse national referendum.