When politics trumps strategy: UK–EU security collaboration after Brexit

Abstract

Both the United Kingdom (UK) and the European Union (EU) have significant incentives for close collaboration in foreign, security and defence policies, given their shared strategic interests, the clear potential for efficiency savings in working together, and the intensity of prior working relations. That the recently negotiated EU–UK Trade and Cooperation Agreement contains no provisions in this area is thus puzzling for followers of European security, who predicted prompt agreement, and for theories of international cooperation, which emphasise the importance of shared threats, absolute gains and prior interaction. We argue the failure to reach such an agreement stemmed from the politics of the withdrawal process itself, which resulted in acute problems of institutional selectivity, negotiating dynamics that polarised the relationship, institutional change that made an agreement less likely, and distributional scrabbling to supplant the UK. Our findings show that the dynamics of moving away from existing forms of cooperation are highly distinct from those motivating cooperation in normal times.

UK membership(s) in the European Higher Education Area post-2020: A ‘Europeanisation’ agenda

“…The EU Freedom of Movement and, more generally, tight political and economic links with the EU were the main areas of debate leading up to the Brexit vote. This fear has now been replaced by uncertainties related to the post-Brexit cooperation in different areas (Martill and Sus, 2021), including HE (Brusenbauch Meislová, 2021). These changes and resulting uncertainties have put the continuation of Europeanisation in the post-Brexit UK into question.…”

United clubs of Europe: Informal differentiation and the social ordering of intra-EU diplomacy

“…In the conventional understanding, differentiated integration may refer both to differences in formalized decision-making procedures across EU policy domains (vertical differentiation) and to variations in individual states’ formal degree of participation in EU cooperation in specific policy areas (horizontal differentiation). A further specification along the latter axis can be drawn between internal horizontal differentiation (where EU member states are excepted or self-exclude from collaborative initiatives) and external horizontal differentiation (where non-EU members are formally invited into, or granted access to, the same collaboration structures) (Eriksen, 2018; Rieker, 2021; Schimmelfennig and Winzen, 2019; see also Martill and Sus, 2021). A key question arising in prolongation of these categorizations has been how increased (or reduced) tolerance for flexible and tailor-made association models at the EU level affects individual states’ room for manoeuvring between autonomy and integration – whether they are EU members or associated states like the European Economic Area (EEA) countries, Switzerland, the United Kingdom and Turkey (Haugevik and Rieker, 2017).…”

“…In the conventional understanding, differentiated integration may refer both to differences in formalized decision-making procedures across EU policy domains (vertical differentiation) and to variations in individual states' formal degree of participation in EU cooperation in specific policy areas (horizontal differentiation). A further specification along the latter axis can be drawn between internal horizontal differentiation (where EU member states are excepted or self-exclude from collaborative initiatives) and external horizontal differentiation (where non-EU members are formally invited into, or granted access to, the same collaboration structures) (Eriksen, 2018;Rieker, 2021;Schimmelfennig and Winzen, 2019; see also Martill and Sus, 2021).…”

The Brexit effect: Political implications of the exit of the United Kingdom from the European Union

“…Martill and Sus (2021) explore the evolution of security debates in Europe. The UK was a key contributor to European security policy in the past fifty years – being the only European country (together with France) with significant military capabilities – and instrumental in initiating the EU’s Common and Security Defence Policy.…”

“…On the other hand, the UK has long maintained a clear preference for NATO as Europe’s main security provider, often blocking initiatives directed to deepen EU foreign policy cooperation (Howorth, 2017). Assessing the Brexit effect on institutional arrangements in this field, Martill and Sus (2021) claim that a wide-ranging UK–EU partnership in foreign policy has not materialised so far not because of a lack of strategic interests, but because of short-term political constraints that prevailed in both polities. They then illustrate the developments in EU foreign policy that followed the Brexit referendum – e.g.…”