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Britain will rejoin the EU within 15 years, former Brussels chief predicts
(www.independent.co.uk)
this post was submitted on 26 Oct 2024
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I'm an American, so it's maybe hard to put myself exactly in the same shoes, but if I were in the EU and able to act freely, I'd personally make the concession to permit the opt-outs to the UK if it permitted for Rejoin (that is, I don't think that there is great harm, as things were working all right earlier and that any precedent concerns could be addressed arguing that this is a special case) and if I were in the UK and could act freely, I'd make the concession to the EU to give up the opt-outs if it permitted for Rejoin (that is, I think that ultimately, the UK was going to have to give up the opt-outs anyway if staying in the EU...I don't think that Sweden's approach of kicking the can down the road repeatedly on monetary union, for example, is going to be sustainable ad infinitum).
I'm just skeptical that political leaders are going to be able to act freely on this matter, as they have their own domestic political pressures.
Yeah, the existence of the TCA does mean that this is considerably less of a factor than otherwise would be the case, but there are still going to be affected parties -- the economic disruption that Brexit would cause was one of the most-prominent arguments in favor of Remain I saw pre-referendum (auto factories using JIT manufacturing will close, vendors doing cross-Channel sales will go under, etc), and this would run through that again.
The EU would be nigh insane if it were to grant the UK its previous opt-outs, in my opinon. They only got them in the first place because they acted as though were special. They never really committed to the idea of the Union and kept using their potential exit from the union as a bartering chip. But, unfortunately them, they fell flat on their faces when they actually left.
And, honestly, things were not all right before; the UK loved to block just about anything that went beyond trade deals.
The EU has nothing to gain if it went back to giving the UK special treatment. And not really a reason to do it, either, because the UK needs the EU much more than the other way around, as the Brexit negotiations demonstrated clearly.
Giving them back their opt-outs would be like giving in to a child that keeps throwing tantrums when things don't go its way. If the UK wants to come back, then the EU cannot allow anything but a regular membership – if it greenlights the UK's application at all.
Yeah. There are political realities to take into account but there's a lot to be gained by both sides, so it'll be a negotiation with a lot of give and take. But the deal that the UK had is gone forever.
The TCA is a very bare bones deal. It's pretty close to a no deal actually. The main problem is that the UK isn't trading with "the EU" anymore. They're trading with France, with all the rules that France has for 3rd countries. And with NL, that might have different rules.