Inside the Deal

Stefaan De Rynck

Description

As a close aide to Michel Barnier, Stefaan De Rynck had a front row seat in the Brexit negotiations. In this frank and uncompromising account, De Rynck tells the EU’s side of the story and seeks to dispel some of the myths and spin that have become indelibly linked to the Brexit process. From the mood in the room to the technical discussions, he gives an unvarnished account of the deliberations and obstacles that shaped the final deal.

De Rynck demonstrates how the EU-27’s unity held firm throughout, while the UK vacillated, changed negotiators, changed prime ministers and changed their aims and tactics. Attempts by the UK to run down the clock and issue ultimatums to force the EU to acquiesce are shown to have had no effect on the course of events. Instead Barnier’s team was successful in protecting EU interests, in fulfilling the mandate defined by 27 national governments while still agreeing different forms of Brexit with two UK prime ministers.

For the EU, Brexit was not, as some UK commentators and politicians liked to portray it, a fight with the UK. It was a fight to get a deal that worked for the EU.

Foreword by Peter Foster

Chronology

Introduction

Part I: Uniting the EU (June 2016–December 2017)

1. No negotiation without notification

2. More glue for uniting the EU

3. Brexit bill: show EU the money

4. Protecting citizens’ rights: which rights, which citizens?

Q. How do we explain the unity of the EU?

Part II: On the elusive search for a bespoke relationship (July 2016–November 2018)

5. The transition period (aka “a vassal state”)

6. The Barnier staircase from Norway to Canada: it is cold outside of the EU

7. Theresa May wants a common rulebook on UK terms

8. The Salzburg summit, sound but no music

Q. Was Mutti Merkel tougher than the rest?

Part III: On the border between Ireland and Northern Ireland (June 2017–December 2020)

9. The origins of the backstop

10. Theresa May’s Pyrrhic victory

11. Boris Johnson meets Brexit reality

12. Johnson agrees to customs checks in the Irish Sea

Q. Did the EU fail to understand Northern Ireland?

Part IV: The journey towards the meaning of Brexit (2020– )

13. The UK leaving global Europe: strategic myopia by the EU?

14. The rollercoaster ride to a level playing field

15. Frosty negotiations on a new relationship

Q. On the art of the deal?

Conclusion

Sujets

• Political Process
• International Relations
• Political Science
• HISTORY
• General officer
• Politics
• History of Europe
• World
• General
• European
• Europe

Informations

• Publié par: Agenda Publishing
• Date de parution: 24 janvier 2023
• Nombre de lectures: 1
• EAN13: 9781788215701
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

© Stefaan De Rynck 2023
This book is in copyright under the Berne Convention. No reproduction without permission. All rights reserved.
First published in 2023 by Agenda Publishing
Agenda Publishing Limited The Core Bath Lane Newcastle Helix Newcastle upon Tyne NE4 5TF
www.agendapub.com
ISBN 978-1-78821-568-8
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Typeset by Patty Rennie
Printed and bound in the UK by TJ Books
Contents
Preface and acknowledgements
Foreword by Peter Foster
Chronology
Introduction
PART I: UNITING THE EUROPEAN UNION
( June 2016–December 2017)
1 No negotiation without notification
2 More glue for uniting the EU
3 Brexit bill: show EU the money
4 Protecting citizens’ rights: which rights, which citizens?
Q. How do we explain the unity of the EU?
PART II: ON THE ELUSIVE SEARCH FOR A BESPOKE RELATIONSHIP
( July 2016–November 2018)
5 The transition period (aka “a vassal state”)
6 The Barnier staircase from Norway to Canada: it is cold outside of the EU
7 Theresa May wants a common rulebook on UK terms
8 The Salzburg summit, sound but no music
Q. Was Mutti Merkel tougher than the rest?
PART III: ON THE BORDER BETWEEN IRELAND AND NORTHERN IRELAND
( June 2017–December 2020)
9 The origins of the backstop
10 Theresa May’s Pyrrhic victory
11 Boris Johnson meets Brexit reality
12 Johnson agrees to customs checks in the Irish Sea
Q. Did the EU fail to understand Northern Ireland?
PART IV: THE JOURNEY TOWARDS THE MEANING OF BREXIT
( 2020–)
13 The UK leaving global Europe: strategic myopia by the EU?
14 The rollercoaster ride to a level playing field
15 Frosty negotiations on a new relationship
Q. On the art of the deal?
Conclusion
Index
Preface and acknowledgements
After 47 years of membership, the UK left the European Union on 31 January 2020. A digital clock beamed onto the facade of 10 Downing Street counted down to 11pm, the beginning of a new chapter in EU–UK relations on a profoundly different footing and one yet to find firm ground.
During the Brexit negotiations, I was a close aide to Michel Barnier, the European Union’s Chief Negotiator from October 2016 until March 2021, and witnessed the whole process with the UK team of Theresa May and then of Boris Johnson. Working for Barnier gave me a ringside seat to all crucial talks as a member of the EU negotiation team. This book is a personal analysis of the Brexit story from that vantage point in Brussels. It does not represent the position of the European Commission.
One motivation for writing this book is that I believe EU civil servants should play an active part in public conversations: openness creates trust. I had privileged access to information of public interest, which I use in this book. The Commission’s unprecedented transparency policy for Brexit has made all official papers freely available online since May 2017, including position papers, internal documents sent to member states and draft legal texts on the terms of withdrawal and the future relationship. There was never a secret as to what the EU wanted. I draw on these sources, hundreds of meetings with national officials and Members of the European Parliament, as well as the media archives of newspapers and magazines quoted in the text, in addition to my own notes of personal discussions with participants at the time. I have eschewed the formality of citations and a bibliography as this is a first-hand account of my lived experience of Brexit. This book tells the inside story of the EU position and reveals how the “Brussels process” worked.
Some authors and commentators mistakenly think that the UK shaped the EU’s behaviour and positions during the negotiations, but British politics was either too divided or too disruptive to have an effect on the EU. This book discusses the real rationale for the EU’s positions and explains why it acted as it did. For this purpose, I blend information that I obtained as a participant with explanations that will be familiar to political scientists on the role of EU institutions, the defence of the EU’s interests and the power of ideas on what it means for a country to be a member state. This is not an academic book, however. The book’s narration and explanation of the rollercoaster ride of the talks is for people who are not experts of EU politics.
The book emphasizes the role of Michel Barnier and his team against the backdrop of British politics. Part of what Barnier asked me to do since 2016 was to understand what was going on in Westminster so that the EU could prepare for all scenarios. I followed British politics closely and looked at Brexit from all the different viewpoints in the UK. In the EU, the main action took place in Barnier’s team, both for negotiating with the UK and for preparing negotiations with 27 national governments and the European Parliament. That internal EU work was as crucial as the actual negotiations. It kept the EU together. My role was also to advise Barnier when he prepared progress reports and options on the way forward for European Council summits. Those meetings were crucial moments for the EU’s unity. I helped to identify which points to put on the table with the UK or which issues to raise in bilateral meetings with prime ministers of EU countries. I participated in public debates in London and EU capitals and briefed media, think tanks, pundits and commentators, in particular in the UK, on what was happening, what the EU was doing, and why.
The Barnier team began operating in October 2016 with a dozen staff members and faced with high uncertainty on what was ahead. One of the strengths of the team originated in those early days. We prepared scenarios for any contingency. Over the years, we kept spending time and resources on things we never needed. That work in itself informed our learning and thinking on what was best to do. In the beginning, we referred to ourselves as a small start-up, une petite entreprise , when job descriptions were fluid and adaptable. Some colleagues from sectorial departments joined us for short periods when negotiations needed specific expertise. Some colleagues left for other challenges before the end, as is typical in the European Commission. The composition of the team kept changing, but the team always supported the Commission with a formidable mixture of political judgement, diplomatic and political contacts in EU capitals, technical and legal knowledge on each EU policy and, perhaps most importantly in Brussels, superb legal drafting skills.
The unity of the 27 member states was a critical factor for the performance of Barnier’s team. The uncertainty on the outcome persisted until the very end but became somewhat easier to manage once Donald Tusk, the European Council president, and all EU leaders defined in April 2017 their basic principles and approach for the negotiations. A short summary of those principles was that “membership mattered”. A country cannot leave, drop its level of obligations and expect to keep the advantages of membership. This unity never wavered despite occasional strain. EU officials working for Tusk and diplomats from France, Germany and the Benelux countries played an essential role herein. Whereas this book discusses elements of what happened in national politics, its focus is on how Barnier built trust with those national governments, reinforced by political contacts of European Commission presidents Jean-Claude Juncker and Ursula von der Leyen, who both stepped in at crucial times to move negotiations forwards or conclude them.
Working for the two Barnier task forces on withdrawal and the future relationship was a privilege and joy in terms of collaborating with colleagues who were at the same time pleasant and competent. We started with a dozen civil servants from different departments and grew to around 60 at the peak of our work, in 2018 and again in 2020, with people from nearly all 27 nationalities. I learnt from each colleague, be it on financial services, police cooperation, fisheries, customs, the nerdy world of the EU budget or foreign and security policy. I hope the book brings this out. As colleagues, we helped each other cope with cognitive dissonance, the discrepancy between working hard on something we did not believe in and still wanted to make happen because a deal limited the damage for the EU.
I want to thank, first of all, Michel Barnier. Brexit was the third time we worked together, after the 2001–04 constitutional convention on the future of Europe and his 2009–14 mandate as European Commissioner in charge of the single market and financial services, a time when we worked together with the UK on new regulations after the financial crisis. Barnier’s advisors joke about his recurring metaphor of being a montagnard from the Savoie region in France, someone who walks one step at a time to the mountaintop, mindful of danger along the path. For Brexit, the metaphor expresses the importance of ignoring the fray of the day and maintaining a focus on what the EU wanted. I found that Barnier was more of a montagnard the third time I worked for him compared to the first time in 2001, perhaps owing to political experiences since then, and a short stay in the political desert after the French people rejected the EU’s constitutional treaty in 2005.
I thank his two deputy negotiators. Until June 2019, Sabine Weyand was the right person in the right place to defend the interests of the EU at a time of high uncertainty. Clara Martinez-Alberola, who succeeded Sabine and who had worked before for 15 years as an aide to Commission presidents Barroso and Juncker, was equally unimpressed by the shenanigans of British politics and skilfully steered the work of more than a dozen Commission departments on negotiating a new relationship. Stéphanie Riso, director in Barnier’s Task Force until Septem