Tuesday 4 February 2020 4:11 am
The European Commission, meanwhile, seeks an alignment of standards across a vast body of EU policy in return for a good trade deal.
The essence of Britain and Europe’s conflicting views of what the EU’s purpose is sits at the heart of our future relationship negotiations.
In Europe’s vision, the joint words by the trio of Commission president Ursula von der Leyen, European Parliament president David Sassoli, and European Council president Charles Michel convey the ideological naivety of the existing European political class, who fail to understand the realignments of democratic forces unfolding across modern European societies.
In their joint statement on the UK’s withdrawal, issued on Brexit day, the three could do nothing but caricature the EU as a global powerhouse, whose now 27 member states know that their “strength does not lie in splendid isolation but in our unique Union.”
This represents a highly unsophisticated and ideological viewpoint in which nation states have no real purpose. The EU’s top brass see Brexit as nothing but isolation, rather than Britain reaching out to a global trading community beyond a politically rigid, highly-indebted, regional protectionist club. Their misunderstanding may well remind many why Britain decided to leave the EU in the first place.
The trio’s op-ed, also published on 31 January, claims: “Without being a member, you cannot retain the benefits of membership.” This repeats the pessimism and wholescale opposition to any British economic advantage to be found in the Commission Task Force’s seminar papers, released over the first few weeks of January.
In those papers, the EU27 is cautious not to let Britain get away without reprimand or penalty for its choice to leave, nor allow it to gain any economic advantage from doing so.
All options for reform in the potential negotiated trade agreement seem truly closed off by the trio. In their words, without UK commitments to the EU “level playing field” on environment, labour, taxation and state aid, “there cannot be the highest quality access to the Single Market.”
This is reminiscent of EU leaders’ bullish warnings to David Cameron during his attempted EU renegotiation back in 2016 — when so much was then said to be “non-negotiable” — which ended up providing an impeccable pretext for the vote to Leave.
Back in the present, no sooner had Johnson set out the UK’s contrary desire to ensure no continued alignment, no jurisdiction of the European courts, and no more concessions, than the Irish Taoiseach Leo Varadkar warned him not to set “such rigid red lines” and to “tone down the kind of nationalistic rhetoric”.
Warm words indeed, given all the impossible red lines that have been set out in the past fortnight by the European Commission’s Task Force papers.
In the EU’s eyes, the requirement for non-alignment is somehow to be cast as nationalism — or, in von der Leyen’s words, “splendid isolation”.
Indeed, the Commission president’s speech in the plenary of the European Parliament as MEPs passed the Withdrawal Agreement advocates a paradox. Her request to a country that was leaving the EU was for it to “commit to uphold our standards for social protection and workers’ rights, our guarantees for the environment, and other standards and rules ensuring fair competition”, in return for “closer and better their access to the Single Market”.
Naturally, it may seem a very British question, but why were we being asked to align to the body of shackles, binding standards and rigid obligations which Britain — through its withdrawal — is seeking to cast off?
Main image credit: Getty
https://www.cityam.com/welcome-to-stage-two-of-the-brexit-battle-the-level-playing-field/
