European officials are pessimistic about a re-establishment of post-Brexit relations with Britain, whoever becomes the next British prime minister in September.
Whether it is Liz Truss or Rishi Sunak who gets the keys to Downing Street on September 5, officials in Brussels have little hope of a rapprochement with the new government.
More than six years after Britain voted to leave the European Union, relations have hit a post-Brexit low as the UK government pushes ahead with plans for a unilateral rewrite of the Northern Ireland Protocol, a axis of the post-Brexit agreement. The EU has said the plans, led by Truss, the foreign secretary, would breach international law and has threatened to tear up the post-Brexit trade deal.
An EU diplomat said there was nothing to suggest Truss, the front-runner, would abandon the approach she has pursued as foreign secretary. “If the UK government goes ahead with the plan already in place, I think it’s fair to say that relations will get worse,” they said.
British and EU officials close to the stalled talks on the protocol, however, believe there is a window of opportunity for a new prime minister once the controversial bill reaches the Lords, where it could be debated during months.
An EU official said there was “a glimmer of hope” of restarting talks while the bill was out of the government’s hands, but said no one could know whether a potential Prime Minister Truss would reduce the ‘confrontation that she had intensified as Secretary of Foreign Affairs.
Expectations are not high. “Campaigns usually just get more entrenched in difficult positions and radicalize candidates. It’s rare that you end up in a more moderate place after a bitter leadership campaign,” the official said, citing experience dealing with Boris Johnson, who fell short of the EU’s initial hopes that he would be an ideologically flexible pragmatist.
The European Policy Centre, a Brussels think tank with close ties to EU institutions, has concluded that the Brexit process “permanently damaged” the EU-UK relationship. “In the short term, any reset of the EU-UK relationship is unlikely, particularly as the seemingly intractable issue of [protocol] remains open,” EPC analysts Emily Fitzpatrick and Fabian Zuleeg wrote in a recent paper.
Mujtaba Rahman, managing director for Europe at the Eurasia Group, said Truss had started her tenure as foreign secretary as a “geopolitical pragmatist” but was seen to have “quickly perverted” into a harder According to the Europeans, “he made an internal calculation around his trajectory that subordinated the interest of Northern Ireland, and indeed the relationship with the EU, to his ambition to move to Downing Street” , he said.
“It’s going to bring a very big trust deficit to the relationship on day one. I think people are very burned by what he did.”
EU officials know less about Sunak but have noted reports that he warned Boris Johnson of the risk of a trade war with the EU when the government was debating triggering the suspension clause in Article 16 of the Northern Ireland protocol.
The former chancellor, however, drew attention in Brussels when he claimed in a recent televised debate that the Northern Ireland bill would lead to free trade between Britain, Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland, a statement that is radically at odds with Brexit. agreement that voted.
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Another key factor that the EU sees as shaping its relationship with the UK is the extent to which the prime minister controls his party. Although Johnson won a majority of 80, his successor may not be in a commanding position.
“It depends on how strong their support is, how strong the party is and how much the party can afford another crisis,” EU officials said. “Will all eyes be on the next election and then try not to accumulate problems? Or do they think the best way to do this is to create anti-EU sentiment?
EU officials will be keeping an eye on the next prime minister’s senior team. The Sunday Times reported that Truss considered David Frost, the former Brexit negotiator, who has totemic status on the Eurosceptic right, as his chief of staff.
Rahman said he had heard suggestions Frost was being considered to resume his role as Brexit minister or even become foreign secretary in a future Truss government. “If she has a significant role and agency in this matter, I think that’s a very negative signal about what she intends to embark on.”