11 April 2017

Financial Times: The pro-European hard Brexit dream

[...] For a hard Brexit to be pro-European, four areas of agreement will be necessary, contends Simon Hix, a politics professor and EU affairs specialist at the London School of Economics. They include the rights of EU and UK citizens, trade and economic relations, UK payments into the EU budget and a wide range of defence, security and institutional matters.

Concerning citizens’ rights, Prof Hix accepts that unrestricted freedom of movement is a non-starter. But he says a deal could cover mutual rights to work and settle in each other’s countries, as well as access to benefits after paying taxes for some years. He floats the idea of a joint EU-UK Blue Card permanent residence scheme, modelled on the US Green Card.

Future economic relations should cover free trade in goods and as many service sectors as possible, with an emphasis on light-touch customs controls, Prof Hix says. This objective chimes with an intriguing observation made by Michael Emerson of the Centre for European Policy Studies, a Brussels-based think-tank.

He says that Mrs May’s call for a “bold and comprehensive free-trade agreement” should be paired with a recent European Parliament resolution that mentioned the possibility of an EU-UK “association agreement”. The result could be a deal remarkably similar to one that the EU and Ukraine signed in 2014: an association agreement that includes a deep and comprehensive free trade area.

Brexit Briefing Sign up to your daily email briefing Keep up to date with the latest developments on the UK’s exit from the EU The third area, relating to the EU budget, is sensitive because it may be caught up in quarrels over Britain’s so-called “exit bill”. Prof Hix suggests setting up an independent panel, with experts from both sides, to decide a figure that the EU and UK would commit themselves in advance to accept. In the longer term, Britain should pay to stay in EU education and research programmes, from which it has greatly benefited in recent decades.

Finally, the UK and EU should not only preserve a close defence and security relationship but set up new institutions such as dispute resolution panels, committees to oversee regulatory equivalence and even an annual EU-UK summit. Andrew Duff, a former Liberal Democrat MEP, notes that Britain will also need to honour its EU-related international treaty obligations, such as those on climate change. [...]

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