On Brexit, nothing is agreed until nothing will be agreed

The Brits simply don’t realise that when it comes to their exit from the EU, Brussels doesn’t have to play ball at all

Alot has been written this past week, particularly in the British media, over the “humiliation” of Prime Minister Theresa May at last week’s summit of European Union leaders in Salzburg, Austria. There, the EU27 and the European Commission — the Cabinet-like structure that’s responsible for the day-to-day management of the political, social and monetary bloc — rejected May’s socalled Chequers plan for Brexit, which is supposed to happen six months from now.

And we’re not even talking about the Irish border issue, which is as complex as cold nuclear fusion. We’re just talking trade. “Humiliation” is not the word that I would use. Instead, try “rejection”, for humiliation carries a value-laden inference in its usage. As far as Brits might be concerned, it likely did infer a value-laden judgement. For most others in the EU27, it was simply a rejection of a plan that was doomed from the start. And here’s why.

The EU works by having open borders. From the very earliest days of a movement towards European unity, free trade has always been at its heart. The Coal and Steel agreements between then West Germany and France had but one aim — to remove trade barriers and allow both nations to rebuild from the ruins of the Second World War and to provide for close integration of the vital industries to allow this to happen. Railways, bridges, towns, cities, car factories, domestic appliance manufacturing — anything and everything that depended on steel and coal — were all built using the materials that moved freely.

Come the Treaty of Rome, when the Benelux nations of Luxembourg, The Netherlands and Belgium along with Italy joined with Bonn and Paris in forming the Common Market, the founding principles had been set. These were the free movement of goods, the free movement of people, the free movement of services and the free movement of money between the six. And it worked. It worked so well that others couldn’t wait to join this Common Market. Indeed, with hindsight, given what has transpired in the United Kingdom over its fraught and fractured relationship with Brussels, maybe then French President Charles de Gaulle was right to veto Britain’s application in 1967 — he believed that London could never play the European game and was too closely allied with the United States. He had firsthand knowledge of the British mindset, having led the freeFrench forces from there during the Second World War.

The Common Market grew, and it became the European Economic Community and then the EU, and it grew because the nations of Europe valued what it offered — a political and economic bloc that provided a market from the Baltic to the Balearics and from the Atlantic to the Adriatic of 508 million, where prosperity was largely assured, markets were big and people could move and work and support their families.

It’s that simple.

It’s so simple in fact that the Brits still don’t get it.

Take Chequers.

The Chequers plan took almost two years to be constructed or construed. Either way, it was dead in the water before it was even floated. Why? Because it supposes — a fatal and fundamental flaw — that the EU is prepared to water down its core values, those four freedoms that have work so well for everyone.

May wants Brussels to allow the UK to reject the freedom of movement of people, the freedom of movement of services, and the freedom of movement of money but keep the benefits of being in the common market when it comes to allowing goods to move freely. That was never going to happen — and certainly not now. And for Britain to even think that suggests that it has been living with its head in the sand for the last three years.

‘Wanting to take back control’

Since that Brexit referendum was passed by a narrow majority of British voters who accepted the thinking of whom French President Emmanuel Macron described at the recent Salzburg summit as “liars”, there are political forces across Europe that would like their nations to leave the EU. In Sweden, Austria, The Netherlands, Italy, France, there are parties on the Right who, in the words of those British “liars”, “want to take back control” of their own affairs.

For the record, the nation-states making up the EU have control over their own affairs, have freely signed onto the various EU accords and treaties, and voted on those in their national parliaments or in referenda. But they have mutually agreed to accept a common framework of rules and governance offered by Brussels in return for membership in that common market.

So, given that Britain is voted out, the last thing that the EU27 is going to do is to make concessions to London. Why? If it does that, then those elements in Sweden, Austria, Italy, The Netherlands and France, will use that as leverage to opt out.

There is also a brutal truth that the British have failed to see over these past two years, and one that since Salzburg has become ever so clear. It is that the EU27 doesn’t have to reach any deal over Brexit: It was the Brits’ decision to go, and why make a deal with a party that doesn’t want to be in the club anyway?

There are some six weeks left before there may be some sort of a compromise deal worked out, something that May will claim is a great agreement, historic, a victory, blah, blah, blah.

The reality is that any deal now will only be reached to throw a bone to the Brits. The EU27 doesn’t need to make a deal and won’t be giving up anything that compromises its freedoms. It’s that simple. Or, to slightly paraphrase May’s own words, ‘nothing is agreed until nothing will be agreed’.