My Secret Brexit Diary. Michel Barnier
In Birmingham, Conservative party officials are meeting, as they do every year at this time. Naturally, this year’s conference is particularly focused on Brexit, with party leaders set to discuss the reasons why their fellow citizens voted Leave. In her speech, Theresa May asserts her desire to build a ‘Global Britain’ following Brexit, and to forge a new role for the UK on the world stage.
There is a not insignificant element of ideology and nostalgia for an exalted past in her proclamations, as in those of other party officials. For example, describing to party activists the bright future he predicts for the country when it leaves the EU, David Davis declared that, by leaving Europe, the UK would achieve flexibility at a time when adaptation is crucial. He claimed that the UK had already created a language and a legal system for the whole world and that, in order to grow, the country would soon embrace the whole world, and trade with the whole planet.
One of the reasons for the Leave vote was a rejection of the free movement of persons. But British politicians pretend they don’t know that it was the UK itself which, at the time of EU enlargement, chose not to activate the clause that would have allowed limits to be imposed upon the free movement of workers from the new member countries.
Another reason, as correctly identified by Theresa May, was a yearning for protection: as she says, ‘the referendum was not just a vote to withdraw from the EU. […] It was about a sense – deep, profound and, let’s face it, often justified – that many people have today, that the world works well for a privileged few, but not for them.’
The Prime Minister is quite right to raise this point. But in the face of globalization, in the face of great continental states such as China and the US, can a single country – even the UK – really be better placed to protect its citizens than twenty-eight countries acting as one? Isn’t it better to stick together, in solidarity, rather than go it alone?
Monday, 10 October 2016: Warsaw
Our fourth capital in ten days. It’s raining in Warsaw, but it doesn’t make much difference to us!
The new Polish government is led by Jarosław Kaczyński’s PiS (‘Law and Justice’) party. Here the language about Brussels is much the same as in London, as is the distrust. What these leaders are after is more an international syndicate than a political community.
London is not mistaken in looking to Warsaw for support from within the EU itself. I am told that the new British ambassador is on a mission over here.
This distrust of the Commission extends to the details of our own organization: the Minister of Foreign Affairs Witold Waszczykowski protests that the team, which is still in the process of being set up, does not yet include any Poles. Even when I cite the name of one of the first officials to join our team, who is Polish, a close adviser to my deputy Sabine Weyland, the minister replies, ‘She’s an international civil servant, she’s not Polish. What we need is a less cosmopolitan approach to negotiation.’
I have to repeat forcefully, twice over, to him: ‘I will be negotiating on your behalf, trust me!’
This trust certainly doesn’t come easily – but I feel confident that it can be won from these ministers whose sovereigntism reminds me so much of what I hear in France. My conversations with Deputy Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki and Minister of European Affairs Konrad Szymański are, however, far more constructive.
Monday, 17 October 2016: The financial settlement
Back in Brussels, one thing is clear: the issue of the financial settlement will be a major point of contention with the British, but will also be a question of unity among the twenty-seven. None of the five Prime Ministers with whom I have already met wants to pay one euro more or receive one euro less on account of Brexit.
I discuss this subject today with the group of Directors-General, some of the most experienced men and women in the Commission, who are supporting me in this negotiation. And I am almost physically reassured to be able to share my thoughts with them, to provoke reactions and to hear their opinions.
On budgetary matters our position is clear. Thanks to Philippe Bertrand, the ‘mad scientist’ of the European budget, a photographer and aviator in his spare time, we have a method and, on the basis of the Union’s accounts, we know exactly what the British owe us. What was decided with twenty-eight members must be paid as if there were twenty-eight.
Preliminary estimates indicate that if the UK were to settle its accounts with the EU on 1 April 2019, the gross liability would be €50–60 billion. Of course, this would need to be balanced against the sums owed to the UK, in particular in respect of the Common Agricultural Policy and structural funds.
Within the framework of the financial settlement, there is another €10–15 billion that could come into play in the future if certain guarantees given by the UK along with other European countries, for example with regard to European aid to Ukraine, were to be called upon. This is what we call ‘potential liability’.
Finally, since the financial settlement with the UK will have to be global, we are working on other commitments that fall outside the European budget, such as those made by the European Investment Bank.
Even if we present only logical and rational arguments, I suspect that talks on these budgetary issues, to be dealt with at the very beginning of negotiations, will be arduous.
One important variable here will be the date of the UK’s exit: the later the exit date, the lower the amount due on exit, since the UK will already have paid a significant proportion of the total as a member state.
Obviously, beyond the question of the financial settlement, the UK’s departure will result in an overall reduction in the European budget. This may present an opportunity to review the structure of the budget and start from scratch, directing it more towards innovation and the political priorities of the Europe of tomorrow. It could also be an opportunity to reopen the important issue of the financing of the budget itself, something that Mario Monti is now looking into at the request of Jean-Claude Juncker.
On the revenue side, this will also be the moment to put an end to the UK rebate, which Margaret Thatcher negotiated at the Fontainebleau summit in 1984, and to discuss the ‘rebates on the rebate’ that have been negotiated over the years by other net contributors to the European budget, such as the Netherlands, Germany, Austria and Sweden. ‘I want my money back’, said Thatcher back in 1984. Today the tables are turned, but this famous phrase only serves to remind me that financial negotiations with London are never a straightforward affair.
Wednesday, 19 October 2016: Ljubljana
Our little team, professional as ever, arrives in Slovenia in good spirits. Leaving Ljubljana airport I have a strange impression of déjà vu: the nearby mountains and the neatly arranged houses along the roads in these villages remind me of Savoie.
Prime Minister Miro Cerar assures us that his country has no specific concerns about Brexit, and expresses his confidence in us: ‘We’ll be with you!’
Before meeting the Prime Minister, we share a meal with State Secretary for Foreign Affairs Sanja Štiglic, who welcomes us into a cottage on the edge of a large lake. It is cold and sunny. A wood fire crackles in the fireplace. It’s a moment of great warmth, and I pick up the thread of a longstanding relationship with this country, the first to emerge from the former Yugoslavia.
It was back in 1993, when I was the newly appointed Minister of the Environment in Édouard Balladur’s government, that I was charged with re-establishing dialogue and trust in the Upper Bearn region, which was in revolt against the state and its authoritarian creation of ‘bear reserves’. Apart from a few ecologists with support back in Paris, and the militant ecologist Éric Petetin, all the elected Pyrenean representatives, hunters and shepherds were at the time united in their resistance