"France sees Europe as a wider playing field on which to amplify its global ambitions; Germany, on the other hand, needs the European Union to secure the production sites of its industries, the markets for its products and to procure low-wage workers for its service sector, as well as to rebalance its relations with France and the United States; while Italy needs 'Europe', in particular Germany, for the continuation of its existence as a nation-state with a capitalist economic order' writes the great German intellectual Wolfgang Streeck commenting on the recent Brexit deal. From Makroskop a very interesting reflection by the great Wolfgang Streeck on the effects of Brexit.
For some years now, people in Brussels have been doing their best not to learn anything from Brexit, and the way things are going, it seems to be working too.
What could have been learned? Nothing less, for example, than to find a way to shake off the technocratic, market-centric and undemocratic chimera typical of a centralised European neoliberal empire of the late 20th century, and to thus transform the European Union into a peaceful community of neighbouring sovereign states linked together by a network of non-hierarchical, voluntary and equal mutual cooperation relations.
Supranationalism is an excuse
The internal workings of the European Union are infinitely complicated and decidedly opaque, but there is one principle that seems to apply everywhere. To understand it, one has to understand the internal politics of the three main member states, Germany, France and Italy, and their complex trilateral relations. Supranationalism is nothing more than a veil behind which real action, national and international, takes place.
France sees Europe as a wider playing field through which to amplify its global ambitions; Germany, on the other hand, needs the European Union to secure production sites for its industries, markets for its products, and low-wage workers for its service sector, as well as to rebalance its relations with France and the United States; while Italy needs 'Europe', particularly Germany, for the continuation of its existence as a nation-state with a capitalist economic order.
The British have never really understood this. Even the British diplomatic service has always found the Brussels underbelly rather impenetrable. While Thatcher hated the EU - too foreign for her taste - Blair believed he could become its Napoleon by turning it, together with Chirac and Schröder, into a neo-liberal restructuring machine: like a 'great continental unifier', but this time from the outside. But it didn't work out that way: France and Germany left him on his own to be a sidekick to his American friend, making him go to war in Iraq on his own, eventually leading to his downfall.
In 2015 Cameron then learned that even the great and powerful Britain, accustomed to ruling the waves of the world's oceans, had failed to get even the most minuscule concessions from Merkel on the free movement of workers in the single market, concessions it needed in order to win the 2016 referendum - which, after all, was supposed to carve British membership of the EU in stone.
Lack of mutual understanding led to Brexit
And in Germany then, no one ever worried about how Merkel's open borders in the summer of 2015, when the Chancellor allowed a million refugees into the country, might have influenced the British vote. Most of the refugees, in fact, came from Syria, from where they had been displaced by a civil war that Germany's American friend continued to fuel but failed to stop. For Merkel, this was an opportunity to correct the "ice queen" image she had acquired in the spring of that year, when she had made it known that "we cannot accept them all".
The lack of understanding was mutual. No one on the continent believed that the Cameron government could lose the referendum bet. The only Britons the continent's educated classes were talking to, after all, mostly belonged to the educated classes in the British Isles, and they were unconditionally in love with the EU for a variety of, often incompatible, reasons. For centre-left Euro-idealists, the EU could be seen as a preview of a political future without the taint of a political past, a virtuous state par excellence, if only because it was not yet a state - 'Europe' as an opportunity for the moral refounding from above of a post-imperial country.
Others, however, who knew how Brussels works, must have laughed at this under their breath - especially a political class that had long ago come to appreciate the possibility of sending difficult issues straight into the bowels of the inscrutable Brussels Leviathan, where they could be broken down and dismantled beyond recognition.
Divorce negotiations conducted behind closed doors
When Cameron, disappointed by Merkel and Co, lost the referendum, the shock was profound, but then EU policy resumed its usual rhythm. France saw it as an opportunity to dust off its original concept of an integrated Europe: that is, an extension of the French state, with the specific aim of incorporating Germany into a French-dominated alliance. Should Britain change its mind and the Remainers prevail, the return to the fold would have to be humiliating enough to preclude any possibility of future British leadership.
On the EU side, the divorce negotiations were led by French diplomat Michel Barnier, one of the most prominent technocrats on the Brussels scene. He played hardball from the start, leaving the referendum revisionists on the British side, as they say, 'to starve'. But that didn't mean wanting to make it easy for the British to leave. And that is where Germany came in, with its strong interest in maintaining discipline among EU member states. Macron and Merkel from the outset insisted that the divorce agreement would have to be costly for Britain, preferably with a commitment to accept the rules of the single market and the jurisprudence of the European Court of Justice forever, even after exit. For Germany it was a matter of demonstrating to the other EU member states that any attempt to renegotiate relations with Brussels would be futile and that special rights both inside and outside the Union were completely out of the question.
It will be up to historians to find out what really happened between France and Germany during the negotiations between the EU and the UK. There is no democratic, or seemingly democratic, political system in the world that works as well behind closed doors as the European Union. Despite the German state's interest in European discipline, the German export industry must have been interested in maintaining a friendly economic relationship with Britain post-Brexit and must have communicated this to the German government in no uncertain terms.
Publicly, however, there was no sign of this: neither in Barnier's negotiating strategy nor in Merkel's statements. Most likely because Germany at the time was under pressure from Macron to use the UK's exit as an opportunity for greater and tighter centralisation, especially in fiscal terms - an issue on which Germany's reluctance to accept deals that could cost it dearly in the future had met with tacit British support, even though the UK was not a member of the eurozone.
As 'Deal or No Deal' day approached, the usual ritual of negotiating until the last minute was enacted, and Merkel probably managed to impose her political weight in support of the demands of the German export industry. The UK had been humiliated enough. During the last negotiating sessions, Barnier, although still present, no longer spoke on behalf of the EU; his place was taken by a close associate of Von der Leyen. To end on a high note, France used the new 'British' strain of the coronavirus to block goods traffic from the UK to the continent for two days, but this could not prevent the deal from going through. Johnson's high-risk negotiating strategy was rewarded with a treaty through which the PM could rightly claim the restoration of British sovereignty. He paid with a lot of fish, but this point was mercifully covered by the further development of the pandemic.
What will be the consequences of this?
France has hired 1,300 additional customs officials who can be deployed to disrupt economic relations between Britain and the continent, including Germany, whenever the French government believes that the "level playing field" contained in the agreement is no longer being respected. France and Germany have succeeded in dissuading other EU countries, especially in the east, from claiming the agreement with Britain as a precedent for their own aspirations for greater national autonomy. Pressure within the EU for a more cooperative and less hierarchical alliance has failed to materialise. And Merkel's successors will face an even more complex relationship with France than in the past, now having to resist French embraces without British support, against the backdrop of uncertainties in the Biden administration.
As for the UK, for the Lexit group it will now again be the British Parliament that governs, independently of the European treaties and the European Court of Justice, and when things go wrong British citizens will only be able to call in their national government. The Euro-revisionists, moreover, called 'Remoaners' by their opponents, seem to have given up their opposition, at least for now, though presumably they will continue to seek protections against the rigid majority parliamentarianism of the British state.
It is possible that Scotland could secede from the UK if the Scottish National Party succeeds in capitalising on pro-European sentiment by promising to stand for the seat vacated by the British state at King Emmanuel's 27-member Round Table. This would be tantamount to ceding Scottish national sovereignty to Brussels, immediately after regaining it from London, forgetting Scotland's conflicting historical experiences with French allies and rulers.
As long as there is the prospect of Scottish membership of the EU, it can be ruled out that Brussels has actually learned anything from Brexit. On the other hand, since learning in Brussels in any case is a rather unusual phenomenon, the question may be left to the good sense of the Scots.
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