EU Position on Brexit and it’s negotiating stance and why it is so opposed to what Brexiteers desire.

From the introduction of the Maastricht Treaty in 1992, the Delors Administration saw a new Europe built for the future in which close integration and regulation were to be key in uniting all European states. It was also the start of the first significant enlargement of the EU where three new states joined the EU and plans for Eastern European states to join were being initiated. Enlargement gave the EU and it’s commission more power and prestige as it began negotiating trade deals. This mass reform not only led to a more diverse European labour and services market but greater foreign investment as services could integrate more easily among member states. Even though each President of the European Commision since Delors has seemed slightly insignificant, they have all continued with this directive of enlarging the EU and increasing it’s power and Brexit threatens to undermine the very institution itself.



The whole premise of Brexit is that Britain could be better off once they have left the EU which, if true, would immediately cause the quick downfall of the institution and so the negotiating team, including Michel Barnier, has had to be extremely careful in ensuring that the EU retains the notion that nations are indeed more prosperous in the bloc than out – especially with Italy, in particular, being particularly threatening in terms of leaving the EU as it feels it’s migrant situation is near the point of crippling the nation, a fear reiterated by many Germans as well. So even though the Commission has to be extremely wary of providing the UK with a good deal it has to be equally wary of providing a bad deal as that could permanently damage relations between the two institutions benefiting neither party.



Equally so, the EU has a number of groups which represent consistent regulation between member states that allow Service Providers to only require one licence from its host nation and still be able to trade across the EU28 (EU27 once the UK leaves). Not only does that benefit each industry in the UK significantly, the EU Commission itself regulates this itself, meaning the burden will pass onto the UK after Brexit. The only struggle with that is that many wonder how much legislation will be *copied and pasted* directly from the EU into UK legislation as many Brexiteers demand the Government to rewrite most laws and regulation. There have been talks of Medical requirements to be lowered so that university students studying Medicine won’t complete a six year course, but much less than that. Furthermore, National Rail, which is sinking in debt by the way, is looking to deregulate many of the services it provides which will incur greater costs on the franchisee as the standards will be different to the country of manufacture – which tends to be Germany currently. Now should a No Deal Brexit take place, not all of the legislation from the EU will either be copied or adjusted. In the case that it is adjusted the question that pertains is whether the EU will allow the UK to join some of these groups that allow for mutual regulation where services can be shared. Unfortunately, the answer to this is no. The EU strongly believes that a non-member state cannot be trusted with information on all member states where the regulations are not identical and we have seen lately that the UK will not be a member of Europol, which shares a criminal database. More significantly, the EU refuses to allow the UK to have access to Galileo, the satellite GPS system, which the UK has reportedly contributed $1.2 billion into and the reasoning behind that is similar to why it won’t allow the UK to join any of its member groups or the Single Market – that a nation can still reap the benefits of the EU without being a member.



Here we come with the Brexiteers ideology, their desire is to reap the benefits of the EU without being a member, and this is where the conflict of ideologies stems from. The Brexiteers are highly opposed to the fact that the EU (Commission and Parliament) are a higher institution than the UK Government and that such extreme levels of bureaucracy takes place at this level without interaction from the Government. The neoliberalism ideology of the Brexiteers clashes with the ideology of the EU which supports globalisation and liberalism and the stubbornness of each group has proved a stumbling block both for the last two years and likely for the foreseeable future and the negotiations between the two will hardly work out for the best if they continue to be as stubborn as they are today. No Deal, sadly, is the most predictable outcome despite the UK Government trying to convince otherwise due to the prominence of the European Research Group threatening to derail her leadership should the PM back down from the Chequers proposal.


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