It will not be until ‘true Brexit’ comes into being, at the earliest in January 2021, that we will be able to start to tally up the economic benefits to the United Kingdom of leaving the European Union. But we can already start to assess the political significance of its new status as a third country.
Up until 31 January, almost one in ten of the members of the European Parliament had been elected to their seats in the United Kingdom; along with Italy, the country was in third place by number of seats, just behind France; in a Union of 28, this was not to be sneezed at. Since the country joined, most British MEPs have been dynamic and well-respected; without suffering the least degree of discrimination, they took their places within the institution, acceding to positions of vice-presidents, chairs of committees, etc. One of them, Lord Henry Plumb, would even rise to become the President of the EP from 1987 to 1989. It was not until later that some MEPs, Conservatives and the pro-independence lobby, would decide to marginalise themselves by joining groups opposing the EU as an entity. The legislative acquis will continue to apply to the United Kingdom through the post-Brexit transition period to run until the end of this year, but its citizens will no longer be represented in the co-decision process.
At the Council of the EU, until the double majority system entered into force, the United Kingdom had 29 votes, the same number as both Germany and France, despite having a smaller population. Not too shabby for something portrayed by the Brexiteers as an intolerable dictatorship. The British held the rotating six-month Presidency of the Council on six different occasions, i.e. for a total of three years. It has now lost its voting rights, including in the powerful body that prepares the Council’s work, the Committee of Permanent Representatives.
British prime ministers, in particular Thatcher, Blair and even Cameron, enjoyed considerable sway within the European Council, whose debates they frequently dominated. With the support of their traditional allies, the Dutch, the Danish and the Swedish, they shaped the treaties, major internal orientations and international stances taken, other than concerning the war in Iraq (into which they nonetheless managed to take the Netherlands, Italy, Denmark, Spain, Portugal and four future member states: Poland, Romania, Estonia and Bulgaria). Had he not played his dirty little games and instead taken his country into the Eurozone when he had the political means to do so, Tony Blair stood every chance of becoming the first President of the European Council in 2009. Certainly, it was under British impetus that the major wave of enlargement in a short period of time was agreed upon, the calendar having been considerably more cautious at the end of the 1990s. The breakdown of the Constitutional Treaty, moreover, cannot be imputed to the United Kingdom: the text was rejected by the French and the Dutch before it was put to the vote at Westminster.
Yet it was at the European Commission, which the Brexiteers like to depict as the beating heart of all that is worst about European centralism, that the British influence was unquestionably the greatest. Very soon after the United Kingdom joined, the Presidency of the institution fell to Roy Jenkins (1977-81). London would play a major part in the appointments of Presidents Thorn, Prodi and Barroso, or in thwarting the hopes of various dead certs (Dehaene, Verhofstadt). The position of Secretary General was held by David Williamson for just shy of ten years, the longest in that office for anybody other than Emile Noël. The collective memory of the institution will contain the names of some outstanding British Commissioners and Directors General.
But it was most particularly with Neil Kinnock, energetic and powerful Vice-President of the Prodi Commission, that British ideology would flourish, particularly with the completion of an in-depth administrative reform inspired by Anglo-Saxon principles. Between 2000 and 2016, the country reached its influential peak. Proper management could not possibly come from continentals. British consultancy firms mopped up contracts by the dozen. Staff training cycles, recruitment criteria were reviewed: the historical European culture and ideals gave way to efficiency in resolving short-term problems. The White Paper on European governance, which was formally announced by President Prodi at the start of his term in office, and which many interpreted as a ‘Spinelli-esque’ future project, was fed into the British consultancy sector and came out the other end as cosmetic reforms which the Council did not even discuss. From Brussels and from London, the careers of British civil servants were monitored using a microscope. This internal empire fell.
Everywhere – at the Court of Justice, the European Economic and Social Committee, the European Committee of the Regions, in the countless agencies of the EU – the United Kingdom has handed back every last bit of decision-making power. It has also lost two agencies that were based in London, the European Banking Authority and the European Medicines Agency, which have been transferred to Paris and Amsterdam respectively.
The United Kingdom was a difficult partner who work with, blocking certain major developments, but it was fair. For instance, it was consistently near the top of the table in the transposition of directives – if they emanated from some tyrannical power, would not the national parliaments have dragged their feet over enacting them? It was one of the three most powerful countries in the EU, overtaking even France in certain situations. Never at any other time in its glorious history has the United Kingdom contributed to decisions affecting a population of 500 million people living in an area extending from the Atlantic to the Russian border.
In particular, its vision of the future of Europe – a huge market, not much legislation, a small budget, soft law, no euro, no supra/post-national authority – will no longer be heard in the Euro-sphere as an official doxa. British ideology has lost some of its reach and influence. It might be able to find a paler recipient, but there will no longer be the Master there to support them.
Renaud Denuit