The Britain-EU deal is welcome, but just a start
Sir Keir Starmer chose the grandeur of Lancaster House in central London to stage the first post-Brexit EU-UK summit on May 19th. He, Ursula von der Leyen (the European Commission’s president) and António Costa (the European Council’s president) all duly talked up a historic “reset” of relations. In fact what was agreed were various small changes to eliminate the worst trade frictions, plus a new defence deal. But this may presage the start of longer negotiations that in time bring the two sides closer together.
The defence-and-security agreement matters most, given the background of Russia’s war in Ukraine and Donald Trump’s demand that Europe spend more on its own defence. Britain will now take part in the EU’s planned €150bn ($169bn) defence fund (having to pay in its own fair share). Both sides recognised that rebuilding European defence without British participation would not be a sensible idea. Efforts by some countries to restrict this spending to EU members alone were duly seen off.
On trade frictions, the most important agreement was to align most food standards. That will facilitate trade in food and fish products. It will also reduce intrusive border checks between Great Britain and Northern Ireland, which was already linked to EU standards as part of the 2023 Windsor Framework. Sir Keir agreed to extend the current fisheries agreement for 12 more years, to 2038. And the two sides are to link their carbon-adjustment mechanisms and work towards a joint electricity market.
The third component of the deal was a youth-mobility (now renamed “youth-experience”) agreement. This will make it easier for young people to move, study and work across borders. Britain is to explore how and when it might rejoin the Erasmus-plus student-exchange programme. And in a symbolic gesture to please tourists, Britons are to be allowed to use border e-gates at most EU airports, reducing annoying queues at passport controls.
Critics from the Conservative Party and Reform UK, amplified by outrage in the tabloid press, were quick to denounce a “betrayal” of Brexit. They grumbled most about the fisheries deal, arguing that it meant handing over Britain’s fishing waters to French and other fishers for another decade. There were also complaints about Britain choosing to align with EU rules when it has no say in how they are drawn up, thereby submitting itself to the jurisdiction of the European Court of Justice. And the youth-experience agreement was attacked as presaging more immigration. The Tories vowed to reverse all these changes if they got back into power.
This narrative of Brexit betrayal is an absurd exaggeration. Sir Keir has stuck firmly to his red lines of not joining the single market or customs union and not accepting free movement of people. Even after his “reset”, this is what was once termed a hard (not a soft) Brexit. He has conceded more than he may have wished on fisheries, but there was never much chance of taking back full control of British waters, not least because British fishers export over 70% of what they catch to the EU. As for being a rule-taker, that is merely the price that countries wishing to sell into the EU market must pay. The EU takes over 40% of British exports, twice as much as America and 20 times as much as India (the two other countries with which Sir Keir has recently struck tariff or trade deals). And a limited youth-experience deal is a long way from the old system of free movement of people across Europe.
A more reasonable conclusion would be that, given the constraints of his red lines, Sir Keir has got about as good a deal with the EU as he could have done. It may not have a large economic impact, but it should bring some financial benefits to hard-pressed Britons. It will remove some of the irritations created by Brexit. The EU has remained firmly committed to its principle of not giving a non-member of its single market a similar degree of access as a member. Both sides have also agreed that they will now initiate a process of negotiation overseen by annual summits.
Indeed this conclusion that the reset is not a single event but rather the start of a process may be what is most significant. It took almost four years of negotiation before Boris Johnson was able to sign the trade and co-operation agreement in December 2020. More than four years on, Sir Keir has managed to soften some of its more egregious features. He is now setting a course for further lengthy negotiations in future.
That is what living alongside the EU elephant as a much smaller party always entails. Ask Switzerland. The Swiss have been negotiating deals with the EU almost continuously for 30 years—and they have just agreed on yet another one that still has to be ratified. ■