Choices have consequences. They have consequences for those making the choices. They also have effects on others. In this final chapter, it is appropriate to reflect on what Brexit means for the two states that obtained EEC membership in 1973 alongside the UK, and for the EU itself, not least as the EU engages in a process of reflection on the ‘Future of Europe’.

The UK didn’t join the EEC on its own in 1973. Denmark and Ireland also chose to join with it.Footnote ¹ Denmark and Ireland became Member States because the UK had chosen to join the EEC. The balance of interests – political and economic – made Danish and Irish EEC membership together with the UK a logical step. The UK’s departure from the EU has consequences for both countries but it is unlikely to lead to either country choosing to leave the EU.

Like the UK, Denmark has, over the years, secured a more differentiated membership in terms of its choices whether to participate in areas of EU co-operation. Following the original rejection of the Maastricht Treaty in a referendum in 1992, Denmark secured three ‘opt-outs’ concerning monetary union, defence co-operation, justice and home affairs and a clarification that EU citizenship did not replace national citizenship. In a referendum in 2015, Danish voters rejected ending Denmark’s justice and home affairs opt-out. These policy-specific referendums have made a ‘Dexit’ less likely even after Brexit. Voter preferences may be for maintaining control over specific policy domains, rather than for Denmark to quit the EU altogether.Footnote ² Brexit might have been avoided had the UK followed the Danish approach.

The UK’s departure from the EU means Denmark has lost one its strongest allies within the EU, and outside the Eurozone. The UK has also been one of Denmark’s most important trading partners with the vast majority of exports of pork going to the UK. At the same time, Denmark’s trade exposure to the UK is not what it was in the 1970s. The integration of the Single Market now ties Denmark closely to those states remaining in the EU and in the Single Market.

The trade consequences of Brexit for Ireland are also significant, with 17 per cent of Irish exports of goods and services going to the UK. But, like Denmark, Ireland’s dependence on the UK for trade has changed since the 1970s when 50 per cent of Irish exports went to the UK. Nonetheless, the economic shock of Brexit will be significant for Ireland and depending on what form Brexit takes – from a trade agreement to no agreement and the application of World Trade Organization (WTO) rules – it is predicted that output in Ireland will fall by between 2.3 and 3.8 per cent.Footnote ³ Different sectors of the Irish economy will be exposed to the effects of Brexit in different ways, and the potential obstacles to trade will be different across sectors: from the risk of tariffs on agriculture, food and beverages to the non-tariff regulatory barriers in the pharma, chemicals and financial services markets.Footnote ⁴

The implications of Brexit for Ireland go beyond trade, so much so that Irish politicians were among the few foreign politicians to have been vocal during the 2016 referendum campaign about what the UK’s departure from the EU would mean for UK–Irish relations. It was noted that regular meetings of UK and Irish ministers and Prime Ministers in Council and European Council meetings had helped forge the bonds of trust that made the Belfast ‘Good Friday’ Peace agreement possible and operational. Indeed, the preamble to the agreement is framed as follows:

Brexit is a politically destabilising force at a time when the power-sharing arrangements in Northern Ireland are fragile. It is not difficult to see how Brexit can be used as a pretext for suggesting that people in Northern Ireland might have a further choice to make between remaining in the UK and outside the EU or remaining in the EU through a united Ireland. As another indication of how important negotiations over Northern Ireland might be, the Irish Taioseach, Enda Kenny, was reported to have had discussions with the European Commission President about the insertion of language into a UK withdrawal agreement that would extend the scope of EU membership to the territory of Northern Ireland in the event of a unification of Ireland.Footnote ⁵ This would parallel the unification of East and West Germany within EU membership without the need for an Article 49 TEU accession process.

When it came to the big decision about the euro, Ireland chose a different path from the UK and Denmark. The UK’s decision not to participate in monetary union was not an impediment to Ireland choosing to do so. It was a defining choice for both countries. It now binds Ireland’s future more closely to that of the EU and the Eurozone. So much so that the Irish Foreign Minister, Charlie Flanagan, described ‘populist’ calls for Ireland to follow the UK out of the EU as ‘simply madness’.Footnote ⁶

It is clear, then, that the UK is making its own choice. Indeed, Brexit could be dismissed as the culmination of an ‘awkward’ membership: the ultimate exceptionalism once all the other opt-outs, derogations and renegotiations had failed to deliver. With no more tools in the bag by which to leverage further flexibility for the UK within the EU, the only choice was for it to leave. But it would be a mistake to pretend that Brexit doesn’t expose difficult questions and choices for the European Union and its future. Or perhaps another way of putting it is that as the EU seeks to define its future, its choices will be shaped, in part, by Brexit.

Following the UK referendum, work started on defining the future of the EU with a meeting of the EU27 leaders in Bratislava in September 2016. The meeting produced a declaration and a ‘roadmap’ for future discussions.Footnote ⁷ It diagnosed a ‘perceived lack of control and fears related to migration and terrorism, and economic and social insecurity’. But in terms of where control – and responsibility – ought to lie, the Bratislava roadmap simply stated the ‘need to be clear about what the EU can do, and what is for the Member States to do’. This issue of allocating responsibility was a prominent theme in European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker’s ‘State of the Union’ speech delivered days before the Bratislava meeting.Footnote ⁸

The Bratislava ‘roadmap’ set out more specific objectives for joint action between the EU and its Member States with clear emphases on issues of migration and security (internal, external and economic):

• no uncontrolled flows of migrants, and a reduction in number of irregular migrants

• control over external borders, and reinstatement of Schengen

• development of consensus on long-term migration policy

• support of Member States in ensuring security and fighting terrorism

• strengthening EU co-operation on external security and defence

• securing the European economic future and way of life with better opportunities for youth.

In a letter written on 31 January 2017 by the European Council President to the leaders of EU Member States in advance of a meeting in Malta to discuss the future of the EU, Donald Tusk identified different threats to the EU.Footnote ⁹ These included threats emanating from the external geopolitics of the EU: an ‘assertive’ China, an ‘aggressive’ Russia, an ‘unpredictable’ new American administration led by President Trump and an ‘anarchic’ Middle East unleashing threats from ‘radical Islam’. For Tusk while these are external threats, they also create opportunities for the EU to exert itself as a global actor and as an ‘equal partner’ to other world powers. Indeed, for Tusk, the alternative to EU membership for European states is not sovereignty but dependence upon these external powers. This is consistent with a view which sees the EU’s future legitimacy as bound up with its capacities for global economic and political influence.Footnote ¹⁰

Whatever the EU may acquire by legitimacy through its external action, the challenge of producing effective and democratic accountable policymaking within the EU remains acute. As Tusk himself acknowledged, the other types of threat to the EU are internal to it. On the one hand, nationalism and populism are directed towards the nation state as the primary location for political expression, while on the other hand, EU leaders and EU institutions appear to struggle to generate an alternative momentum capable of making the EU relevant to the lives of its citizens. The external and internal threats are also clearly connected. The threat of terrorism is both a force that encourages co-operation between EU states, but can equally be co-opted by national politicians to invigorate nationalist discourses about borders, internal security and the protection of the national ‘self’ from the threat of the external ‘other’.

In advance of a gathering of European leaders in Rome to mark the sixtieth anniversary of the Treaty of Rome establishing the EEC, on 1 March 2017, European Commission President Jean Claude-Juncker published the European Commission’s White Paper on the Future of Europe.Footnote ¹¹ Its aim is to encourage a process of reflection on what the EU has achieved, what challenges it faces and what scenarios might shape the evolution of the EU in the period up until 2025. The anniversary, according to the White Paper is an opportunity for a ‘united Europe’ to ‘renew our vows’.

The White Paper makes one, brief, mention of the fact that a Member State has chosen to leave the EU. This is not, then, a direct response to Brexit. Indeed, it is a White Paper that would not have looked much different had the UK chosen to remain in the EU. Its weakness is its timelessness.

Nonetheless, its repeated references to the values of the Union, to unity and to what binds EU states together is a recognition that for the EU this is a ‘critical juncture’ that demands a response from the EU and its Member States.Footnote ¹² The UK’s de-membership cannot be a pretext for dismembering the EU itself. Rather, the ‘renewal of vows’ is a plea to the other EU states to remain faithful just as the EU begins its negotiations on the UK’s divorce.

The risks and challenges to the EU27 identified in the White Paper are those which were already present on the EU’s agenda, and which were identified in the Bratislava declaration. The risks to the EU’s economy are clear and are not just about continuing to manage systemic financial and debt risks in an integrated and interdependent European economy. They are those from a changing world of work and increased automation. There is also the risk of a return to more protectionism and less trade. Meanwhile, the EU’s share of global GDP is diminishing as new economic powers like China continue to grow. The demographic challenge – identified more than two decades ago – of an ageing population and its pressures on social protection and healthcare systems is also growing. There are also security challenges from political instability and terrorism. Global security problems fuel a migration and refugees crisis that strain the capacity of the EU to co-ordinate responses and distribute responsibilities equitably.

There is some recognition that the EU faces a trust and legitimacy problem. In part, the White Paper presents this as a phenomenon which the EU shares with national authorities. In part, it views the problem as stemming from the ‘two-level’ game of politics in which political blame is shifted upwards, while political credit is claimed downwards. The difficulty lies in what to do about these problems and what Brexit might tell us about how to approach the task.

At one level, the White Paper is imbued with the themes of the EU’s traditional ‘mission legitimacy’ – the post-war reconstruction of Europe and the maintenance of peace. Wistfully, it acknowledges that time has weakened the force of these achievements as a legitimating resource for the EU, particularly for the generations of European voters born after 1945. Yet, as the post-referendum debate about whether a generation of ‘baby boomers’ was responsible for quashing the aspirations of a ‘millennial’ generation of younger voters exposes, views and attitudes towards the EU correlate with a range of factors and not merely age.

Looking more to the future, the White Paper echoes Tusk’s vision of the EU as a global leader in combating climate change and promoting ‘free and progressive’ global trade. But as the UK’s EU referendum and the US presidential campaigns dramatised, internationalism, globalisation and the liberalisation of trade is in tension with more nationalistic instincts to protect ways of life and preserve jobs. It is not enough to aspire, as the White Paper does, for international trade that ‘benefits all’ if by that we simply mean that aggregate welfare is increased. What also matters is how winners and losers are distributed and what efforts are made to protect and compensate those most at risk of losing out.

This matters all the more given that markets are cross-border and global, while democratic decision-making and institutions of social protection are national and local.Footnote ¹³ There is no point in political and economic European elites pursuing their preferences for liberalised trade if it generates negative effects which are felt locally and which are merely left to local political processes and social institutions and services to manage. And so, the added value of the EU has to be seen in terms of a capacity to buffer and manage the process of trade liberalisation and to manage economic interdependence in a way that would be preferable to doing so as twenty-seven individual states. This is the challenge for the EU and it is the challenge to the UK as it seeks to present ‘Global Britain’ as a champion of trade that ‘can work for everyone’. Brexit is a test case for whether going it alone is sovereignty-enhancing or sovereignty-diminishing.

The White Paper stakes out five key scenarios around which it is suggested that the future of the EU will be built:

• carrying on along the same path of integration with incremental change

• focusing solely on the Single Market

• a coalition of the winning in which those who want more co-operation are free to do so while others do not

• using scarce resources of time and commitment to prioritise areas in need of more effective decision-making while doing less elsewhere

• a step-change to increase collective co-operation and decision-making through the EU.

As intimated earlier, there is a timeless quality to this typology of EU futures. Unsurprisingly, the EU will change in ways that reflect one or more of these scenarios.

The aim of all this reflection is to allow the European Council meeting in December 2017 to set a course for the EU in time to influence the European Parliament elections in June 2019. At the same time as the UK is negotiating its withdrawal, the EU is defining what sort of EU the UK will be withdrawing from.

It is instructive to consider whether it would have made any difference to the outcome of the UK’s referendum on membership if David Cameron had not chosen to go for a quick renegotiation and an early referendum but instead had waited till after the UK had held its presidency in the latter half of 2017 when it might also have shaped the direction of the White Paper reflection and steered the orientation of the European Council? Would time and timing have mattered?

The conclusion might be that these kinds of EU reflections simply suffer from a basic problem, namely that they focus on the policy areas where the EU has competence to act, with the debate oriented to whether it should be doing less or more. The issues which tend to be central to voter concerns are those that primarily remain within the powers of the Member States in respect of taxation and public spending on things like education, health, welfare, transport and other public services. The apparent gap between the EU and citizens, therefore, has two manifestations. First, the policy choices exercised through European co-operation either seem remote from the day-to-day immediate concerns of citizens or don’t obviously appear to generate benefits on the ground that citizens experience and value. Secondly, there is the anxiety that EU membership undermines the capacities of national governments to do the things that voters do care about.

The 2016 referendum campaign brought these issues to the fore and as previous chapters describe, while they were dramatised in the context of the referendum, they are not unique to the United Kingdom. Tackling these issues requires political leadership. At EU level, that leadership needs to come from the European Council with the European Commission fulfilling a legal mandate under the treaties and a political mandate that comes from the European Council. It is the Prime Minister and Presidents that are the connection between the domestic political arena and that of the EU. Only they have the legitimacy to take control over the future of the EU. It is these leaders and their governments who are also accountable to their national parliaments. It is not just the choices made by EU leaders that will shape the future of the EU. It is also the choice of those leaders. Elections in the Member States take place at a crucial time for the EU and for the Brexit negotiations. More choices in time and of time.

Twenty-seven EU leaders met in Rome on 25 March 2017 not just to commemorate sixty years of the instrument that founded the EEC, but also to proclaim the Rome Declaration and its message of ‘unity’. The leaders agreed that:Footnote ¹⁴

The message is a clear one: membership of the EU is the means by which nation states preserve and protect their interests and values, whereas standing alone puts those interests and values at risk. To underscore the point, in his speech in Rome, European Council President Tusk stated that:

In other words, whereas a new nationalism and a new internationalism inspires the UK to seek to exercise sovereignty outside of EU membership, for the EU27 it is through EU membership that sovereignty is maintained and exercised both as between Member States and externally in the EU’s relationship to other global actors.

For the EU, as much as for the UK, this is a time of change, a time for change, and a time to change.