DIVORCE ENGLISH STYLE

Nine months following the Brexit referendum, the British Prime Minister Theresa May has finally officially presented the Notification of Withdrawal to the EU authorities to trigger Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty (2007), which states: "Any Member State may decide to withdraw from the Union in accordance with its own constitutional requirements."

On April 29, the leaders of the 27 EU member states will convene at an emergency European Council to adopt the guidelines defining the overall principles for the Brexit talks that must be completed within a period of two years, as stipulated in the Treaty. Thus, if everything goes smoothly, which both sides doubt indeed, the Brexit procedure should end in March-April 2019.

It is possible to extend this period but this requires a unanimous consent of all the EU member states. Otherwise, even if the parties fail to reach an agreement on the terms of the withdrawal, the UK will automatically cease to be an EU member state losing such benefits as duty-free trade, etc. and without getting anything in return.

Apparently, the UK can still regulate its trade relations getting approximately 4.5% duties under the provisions of the WTO (World Trade Organization) but this will seriously impact the competitiveness of many British manufacturers. Secondly, even under the WTO rules, the UK will face a cost of €73 billion annually (data taken from H.M. Treasury). And, thirdly, London will have to re-register membership in the WTO, which can take more than one year.

“We shall be firm, we will be friendly, we will never be naive,” said EU chief negotiator for Brexit, Michel Barnier, defining the position of the EU. He added that the EU intends to defend firmly the single market and its basic "four freedoms" (free movement of goods, services, labour and capital), which are indivisible and ‘cherry picking’ is not an option.

On April 5, the European Parliament decreed that the UK must comply with "all its legal, financial and fiscal obligations." This applies to various EU projects approved for the implementation up until 2020 and amounting to €60 billion, as well as the pensions of government officials for decades ahead, including the British ones, working at the EU institutions. As the formula for calculating the British debt has not been determined yet, the amounts are nominal.

Although the British government lawyers claim that Brussels does not have legal basis to force the UK to make these payments, Baroness Faulkner, a member of the House of Lords, admitted the probability of payment in exchange for certain concessions from the EU such as a privileged access to the European markets.

Long before the start of negotiations, the parties have exchanged the terms acceptable for holding discussions on future relationships.

London has backed the ‘hard option’ for divorce renouncing the "four freedoms of the EU." The ‘soft option’, which allows for active cooperation with the European Union without being a member (eg., Norway, Switzerland, Iceland, and Liechtenstein) was rejected mainly because the UK did not want to be dependent on the legislative dictate of Brussels, compulsory payments to the EU budget and the flow of migrants from continental Europe.

The European Council has developed a two-stage negotiations plan. At first, the UK leaves the EU and only then may negotiate the trade terms with the EU member states. Of course, this does not work for London, which insists on holding the negotiations in parallel with the trade talks. But Brussels is adamant, as it concentrates on minimizing the damage from Brexit. In addition to resetting economic ties, it must think about the future of about 3.2 million EU citizens currently residing in the UK and about 1 million British citizens residing in the European Union. Indeed, the British authorities have enough issues to worry about. According to the British Secretary for Brexit, David Davis, it is necessary to rewrite about 12,000 European laws covering various issues from employee rights to environmental protection.

The end of "legal colonisation"

Before the referendum on the withdrawal from the EU, thousands of well-known scientists, financiers, industrialists, and celebrities have appealed to the British public to vote against the Brexit. They have cited a number of examples demonstrating the deep integration and interdependence of cultures, businesses, and living conditions on the island and the European continent and claiming that the inhabitants of the British Isles had no traditions of isolationism allegedly inherent to them by quoting the famous lines of the popular poet John Donne written back in 1623: "No one is an island, entire of itself..."

On the other hand, the supporters of the "divorce" stick to a different point of view. The former Mayor of London, and now the head of the Foreign Office, Boris Johnson, who has long been known for his love to disseminate unflattering epithets, compared the actions taken by the EU leadership with Hitler’s attempts to create a super-state, urging them to stop the "legal colonisation", as the EU infiltrates just about every area of public policy of sovereign states.

On February 20, the EU summit in Brussels “reached an agreement that should prevent Britain’s withdrawal from the EU”, reported joyfully the then British Prime Minister David Cameron on his Twitter account in 2016. "Agreed a deal with EU that will give the UK a special status in the EU... Britain will never participate in the processes of creating a narrower EU, will never be part of a European superpower. Strict restrictions will be imposed on migrants from the EU regarding admission to our social welfare system", said Mr. Cameron being a supporter of the UK’s stay in the EU.

Although Brussels made a number of significant concessions in order to ensure that Great Britain remained in the EU, it was not possible to avoid a negative outcome of the referendum.

The expert on migration issues, Professor of the University College of London Christian Dustman believes that UK residents were misled about migrants from the EU. According to him, over the past 16 years, tax deductions from their salaries have been significantly higher than the state benefits paid to them. As a result, people voted guided by distorted facts.

Still, the referendum statistics is not a manifest of a unanimous desire of the British people. Rather, the outcome of the referendum was a confluence of circumstances when the older British were more active than the youths. A full three-quarters (36%) of British youths (ages 18-24) voted to remain in the EU. Almost two-thirds (58%) of the next-youngest category (25-34) did, as well but 80% of voters in the generation of Britons over 55 years voted to leave. At the same time, if 75% of the first age category voted against the leave, 61% of the third supported it, which has predetermined the British divorce.

Territorial problems

Nobody envies Theresa May. Even if Tony Blair has failed to reach a consensus on Britain's entry into the Eurozone during the premiership, Mrs. May is risking to be remembered as none of the heads of the UK government had ever been. Britain has never been so close to face a real threat of losing Scotland, Northern Ireland, and Gibraltar.

In 2014, a Scottish referendum demonstrated that most of its residents wanted to remain in the UK. And one of the main arguments was the UK membership in the EU. This was confirmed during the general vote in June last year, when 68% of the Scottish population opposed the withdrawal of the country from the EU.

Last month, the Scottish parliament voted to hold a new referendum on independence from Britain, empowering the First Minister Nicola Sturgeon a mandate to start negotiations with London, as it is not possible to hold a legally binding referendum without the latter’s approval.

The Scots are aware that if they gain independence, they will not be able to automatically join the EU but they are still determined to persuade London to allow them to hold a referendum already in the autumn of 2018 until the spring of 2019. That is, before the completion of negotiations with Brussels.

After Brexit, a border between the Republic of Ireland, an EU member state, and the Northern Ireland, an administrative and territorial unit of the Great Britain, will inevitably be required.

In March, the Unionists Party of Northern Ireland, supporters of Britain, lost the majority in the regional parliament for the first time in country’s history.

So, all prerequisites for the aggravation of the old Northern Ireland conflict and the revival of the reunification movement are in place.

Meanwhile, Brussels has caught London in surprise stating that the Brexit agreement did not cover Gibraltar, a small piece of land in the south of the Iberian Peninsula.

This overseas territory of Great Britain, taken from Spain some 300 years ago, controls the Strait of Gibralta, connecting the Mediterranean Sea with the Atlantic Ocean.

The struggle between London and Madrid for this six-kilometers-long piece of land continues for hundreds of years. In 1970, the conflict could well develop into an armed confrontation.

And now, Brussels states that it gives Spain the right to decide the future of Gibraltar though bilateral negotiations with London.

Madrid obviously has means to impose its jurisdiction upon this territory. There are already calls in London to protect Gibraltar by force if necessary.

An unlikely scenario

The author of Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty, British diplomat John Kerr, in his interview with Politico noted that Brexit could be stopped even after the this article is triggered.

"The rules of the game in the EU are that you can change your mind. Many member states have changed their mind during a legislative procedure because they’ve had general elections back home and the left has thrown out the right or the right has thrown out the left and they’ve stood on their head in the [European] Council — and that’s accepted."

At the same time, Mr. Kerr noted: "This is a little unlikely but I would love to be the British negotiator who came with the second letter saying ‘actually we’ve changed our mind’."

A difficult path to the EU 

Sixty years ago, when six founding countries (France, Belgium, West Germany, the Netherlands, Italy, and Luxembourg) signed the Treaty of Rome forming the European Economic Community (EEC), London did not want to join. Four years later, in 1961, being convinced of the economic advantages of the Union, it’s changed its mind and applied. However, the then French President Charles de Gaulle was a fierce opponent to the UK membership, as he had considered the UK a real threat to European unity and a driving force of the US interests on the continent. Only after Mr. de Gaulle’s resignation in 1969 and his subsequent death in 1970, the negotiations were resumed and the UK became a member of the EEC in 1973. The relations between London and Brussels were not easy during the premiership of Margaret Thatcher. After her resignation in 1990, these ties have become closer reaching the peak under Tony Blair. He even had a desire to join the Eurozone but the strong growth of the British economy prevented his plans. As a result, the skeptics won arguing that the transition to Euro would not be better for the country. Blair was upset, as he wanted to be remembered as a premiere that led Britain into the Eurozone.