Childish behaviour towards PM says a lot about the EU, says Ross Clark
WHEN you see the pomp that goes into an EU summit you expect those present to behave in a statesmanlike fashion.
Theresa May looks extremely AWKWARD at EU Summit
Instead, in Brussels they behaved like rude schoolchildren.
The sight of some of them hugging each other while ignoring Theresa May is typical of the way they have behaved since Britain voted to leave the EU.
They went on to exclude the Prime Minister from their discussions on Brexit and sent her home without any dinner.
They don’t know how to react other than to try to gang up on Britain in a petty fashion
While the vote for Brexit surprised many, it has left senior EU officials and some national leaders in a deep sense of shock.
It had never occurred to them that a country might one day want to turn its nose up at their pet project.
They don’t know how to react other than to try to gang up on Britain in a petty fashion. What we have heard from them since the vote in June is mostly threats and demands – the most recent being the suggestion by the EU’s chief Brexit negotiator Michel Barnier that Britain would be forced to pay £50billion in contributions as a price of leaving the EU.
By contrast the May Government has made constructive proposals, such as guaranteeing the right of existing EU residents to remain living in Britain in return for the EU guaranteeing the right of Britons to carry on living in countries where they have settled. It would be a very easy deal to make and would remove uncertainty for thousands of people but EU officials will not co-operate.
On trade there are some in the EU who seem prepared to damage some of their own industries in order to spite Britain.
The line taken by many is summed up by what Michel Barnier told a French newspaper last month: “Either you’re a member or you’re not. There is no in-between status. There is no hybrid status between the two.” In other words, if Britain is going to leave it must be cast into the outer darkness.
Barnier has said any trade deal between Britain and the EU could take a decade to negotiate and has several times refused to entertain any interim deal whereby trade could continue on current terms while the finer details of a long-term deal are hammered out.
It might make sense for the EU to play hardball with Britain if all trade was in one direction: us trying to sell things to them. But it isn’t.
All countries benefit from free trade. If anything it is other EU countries which would have the most to lose if bone-headed EU officials were to declare a trade war.
In October, for example, we exported £2.8billion worth of goods and services to Germany while they exported £5.3billion worth to us. We exported £1.7billion worth to France and they £2billion worth to us. Does Barnier really want to throw the German car industry or French wine industry to the wall purely for the pleasure of pouring scorn on a country which voted to leave the EU?
Fortunately, more reasonable voices are beginning to be heard. Pointedly, they are coming from politicians who are much closer to ordinary people than is the lofty Barnier, who has spent the past six years as an unelected commissioner.
A fortnight ago, Bavarian economic minister Ilse Aigner appealed for Britain to be granted a good trade deal with the EU for the sake of German industry.
Former Irish opposition leader Brian Hayes, now an MEP, sided with Philip Hammond in suggesting that the way forward is for a transitional trade deal. He was not just being nice – he made the suggestion in Ireland’s self-interest, acknowledging that Britain is an extremely important export market for Irish farmers.
Britain did not vote to leave the EU so that we could keep Kerry butter off our supermarket shelves or Volkswagens off our streets. We all benefit from having free trade in goods and services – and indeed in allowing people to cross borders to work, study or enjoy a holiday.
What we voted for was to regain our sovereignty so that we could have a trading relationship with the EU without having decisions on our internal affairs made by a distant and undemocratic pseudo-government.
Michael Barnier is wrong to say there is no in-between status of having trade with the EU and being completely on the outside. Norway and Switzerland enjoy their own bespoke arrangements. Is it impossible for Britain to have its own tailor-made arrangement with the EU, one where free trade is maintained, where EU citizens can come here to work but where we don’t have completely open migration?
What senior EU officials really fear, of course, is that if Britain is granted a deal that is not obviously inferior to the present arrangement then other countries will want it too.
Hence we have to be seen to be punished. It is the same approach that the Soviet bloc tried with its citizens – trying to keep them in by shooting those who tried to leave.
It didn’t work for them and it won’t work for the EU. If countries are trying to leave it is a sign that there is something wrong with the organisation.
The EU’s officials would be better off asking themselves why we want to leave, and devising meaningful reforms, not dreaming up ways to punish us for wanting to get out.