Disarray will cloud start of EU-UK Brexit talks

Analysis

The withdrawal process is set to be one of the most complex international negotiations of modern times and the two sides have less than 18 months to reach an agreement. The United Kingdom is due to leave the EU at the end of March 2019 and negotiations will have to be completed several months earlier to allow time for parliamentary ratifications.

Officials on the EU side in particular are already worried that the timetable is too tight. Nevertheless, the UK government's argument that talks should focus on future trade arrangements straight away, in parallel with other issues, has been rebuffed.

Instead they will focus initially, as the EU had always intended, on the elements of a separation agreement.

Initial priorities

Creative diplomacy will be needed to deal with an exit bill for the United Kingdom, which the EU insists will stretch into tens of billions of euros. The initial aim is to agree on the methodology for calculating the bill, but the eventual challenge will be to present the figures in a way that will pass muster with Eurosceptic voices in UK politics and the media.

Both the United Kingdom and the EU hope more rapid progress can be made on the question of how to guarantee citizens' rights in the future. UK Prime Minister Theresa May intends to present detailed ideas to her fellow leaders at an EU summit in Brussels later this week and the United Kingdom will then publish its proposals in full.

Both sides want an early resolution of this issue to ease the uncertainty felt by more than 3 million EU citizens living in the United Kingdom and about 1 million UK citizens living elsewhere in the EU -- but the legal and technical details are extremely complicated (see EU/UK: Nationals face uncertainty after Brexit - May 30, 2017).

The EU wants the European Court of Justice (ECJ) to play a role in guaranteeing the future rights of EU citizens; the United Kingdom does not. One possible compromise would be to create a new legal body that would follow the directions of the ECJ but would be nominally independent.

'Softer' Brexit?

Negotiations on all these technical issues are due to continue throughout the summer, with face-to-face talks taking place for one week every month. At the same time, political debate in the United Kingdom has already turned to the unresolved question of the type of Brexit that the country is seeking.

The position of the government is still that the United Kingdom will be leaving both the single market and the customs union -- a clean break with the main economic elements of EU membership. However, there is a growing chorus of voices in politics and business demanding a rethink.

The failure of May's Conservatives to win a parliamentary majority has reopened debate within the party itself and across the political spectrum (see UNITED KINGDOM: Vote will complicate Brexit process - June 9, 2017). Efforts to create an informal cross-party majority to tone down the 'hard' Brexit set out in the Tory manifesto will intensify.

A large amount of legislation will need to pass through parliament to prepare for Brexit and May's government will be vulnerable at every turn. The sense of political instability in London worries EU negotiators, who fear that weak leadership increases the chances of the entire negotiating process falling apart.

Transition period

The sense that time is pressing and the outlook is extremely uncertain will also focus attention on the demand for a lengthy transition period, lasting for several years after March 2019 (see EU/UK: A transitional Brexit deal is likely - March 29, 2017). It would give time for a long-term trade deal to be negotiated and for businesses to prepare for life outside the EU.

The difficulty is that the EU would expect its own rules to continue to apply during a transition -- among them budget payments, legal oversight and the free movement of workers.

Despite the obvious attractions of a smooth transition, it could therefore prove politically divisive in the United Kingdom. Ideological supporters of a hard Brexit, many of whom inhabit the Conservative backbenches in parliament, simply want to leave.

Outlook

The negotiations that began this week will have to continue in the knowledge that the position of the UK government, and the prime minister herself, is extremely precarious.

It is quite possible that another general election will have to be held during the negotiating period and a new government could emerge in London with very different ideas about how it wishes to proceed.

Given this sense of uncertainty, the tone of the talks in Brussels will be important. They started well enough, but there are obvious tensions lurking beneath the surface. The EU is very clear that it was the United Kingdom's decision to leave the EU and it will be primarily for London to deal with the consequences.

For the negotiations to have any chance of success, compromise will be necessary on both sides. That will take time -- no one shows their hand at the start of a negotiation.

Nonetheless, one striking feature of the recent UK election campaign was that neither of the main parties, the Conservatives or Labour, was willing to have a serious discussion about how such compromise might be achieved. That means that many people in the United Kingdom are still unaware of what leaving the EU may eventually entail.