The European Political Community: ‘Reconnecting’ with Europe?

The Reframer | No. 02.2024

Jul 17, 2024

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Sir Keir Starmer, Prime Minister, will host the fourth meeting of the European Political Community (EPC) tomorrow. Over 45 European leaders will gather at Blenheim Palace to discuss the strategic challenges facing the continent, with discussions focusing on migration, energy and connectivity, and upholding democracy. The new Labour government was elected on a pledge to improve the United Kingdom’s (UK) political and economic relationship by ‘reconnecting’ with the European Union (EU) and other European nations but without fundamentally altering the terms of the current trading architecture, i.e., remaining outside the EU’s single market and customs union.

Instead, Labour has pledged to put an ambitious ‘UK-EU security pact’ at the heart of an improved relationship. Further details are yet to emerge, but this week’s EPC meeting will be the first opportunity Starmer has to communicate his government’s new European agenda. Here, we attempt to ‘disrupt’ orthodoxy and ‘reframe’ outmoded thinking to explain why developing a strategic role for the EPC is a necessary complement to achieving the new Labour government’s ambition of an improved UK-EU relationship.

What has security and foreign policy got to do with the UK-EU relationship?

A lot. During the initial phase of the Brexit negotiations, Theresa May’s proposal for a ‘UK-EU Security Partnership’ was not received enthusiastically by the EU, and London was accused by some in Brussels of using security as a bargaining chip. Boris Johnson’s government then ruled out a security agreement altogether.

Following Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, there has been increasing demand from within the EU for more formal and structured security and foreign policy cooperation with Britain. Previous Conservative governments were reluctant to engage in such a strategic dialogue while outstanding issues, such as the status of Northern Ireland, continued to cause political turbulence.

At a working level, agreement on many of the difficult issues surrounding Northern Ireland have now been resolved, and Rishi Sunak’s government quietly rebuilt trust with European leaders, including by accepting the role as host of this week’s EPC summit.

While the UK may not wish to be subject to EU governance, it will still be affected by decisions taken in Brussels, and the situation in Ukraine illustrates that Britain retains a keen interest in its European neighbourhood. Therefore, without reengaging with the minutiae of EU institutional governance, the UK would surely benefit from a substantive dialogue on the key strategic questions – security, economic resilience, climate, migration and asylum – where it can contribute to a wider European effort.

Okay, but what is in it for the UK?

Opportunities! The new government has not outlined what its proposed EU security pact would entail. However, there is a substantive opportunity to boost European security capabilities and the narrower issue of the UK-EU economic relationship, if these issues are approached deftly by Britain.

On security and defence, the consistent challenge has been to develop European economies of scale in procurement and remove duplication by encouraging greater specialisation. This would enable constrained public finances to stretch defence budgets further and improve European credibility within NATO, helping to address Washington’s concerns about greater burden sharing within the alliance. All would enable the UK to consolidate its position as the umbilical cord binding the two sides of the Atlantic together – a role now missed by many of its European allies post-Brexit.

Clearly, a more integrated and coordinated European security relationship would require much deeper levels of cross-Channel trust than currently exists, as it implies greater interdependence. This cannot be achieved in a single step. And to facilitate meaningful security cooperation, the EU would need to emphasise the ‘open’ in its concept of ‘open strategic autonomy’. For example, this would mean revisiting non-EU members’ exclusion from common defence procurement rules, and wider issues such as cooperation on critical minerals.

Meanwhile, the new government is committed to improving the economic relationship. The logic of its policy of fostering a closer UK-EU relationship via the lens of security is that strategic discussion around European security and economic resilience should no longer be siloed but be considered in conjunction.

Fine, but will not the EU simply bag the UK’s offer and refuse to engage on commercial issues?

It is certainly a risk – a challenge for the new Labour government to overcome. Developing an ambitious security pact without receiving any concessions on the trade relationship would be an obvious political target for a fiercely eurosceptic opposition. But it would not be in the EU’s interest to enter into new and unbalanced agreements with Britain which create future instability.

Therefore, it would not be unreasonable for the UK to point out that a genuine new ‘geopolitical partnership’ requires a broader rapprochement, including removing unnecessary and mutually damaging trade frictions. On many issues, the EU has granted the UK worse trade terms than its other strategic partners and, in some cases, its potential geopolitical adversaries. These issues could be addressed under Labour’s policy of remaining outside the EU single market.

The challenge facing HM Government is that the European Commission owns the UK-EU trade relationship, whereas EU member states are more likely to see the value of a broader and deeper strategic relationship with Britain. This is why the EPC is a promising vehicle for UK influence, because it provides a broader forum where Britain can draw the undeniable link between security and economics, or in Rachel Reeves’ parlance: ‘securonomics’

Very well, but is not the EPC just another talking shop?

The jury is still out. Yet, if it is to work, the UK, with its intelligence and military strength, will be vital to its success. Previous attempts to establish such an organisation have foundered because most non-EU countries have viewed such initiatives as a pale imitation of full membership. Britain, however, has the scale, profile and the motivation to provide the EPC with a mission clearly outside the confines of the EU. Equally, the composition of the EPC, which includes a wide group of non-EU members, including those on the front line of Russian aggression, such as Ukraine, and Europe’s other major financial centre, Switzerland, reflects the fact that the UK’s interests in Europe are not defined solely by Brussels.

The narrower UK-EU relationship will continue to be governed by the bilateral Trade and Cooperation Agreement. But Britain needs a means of talking to ‘Europe’ which reflects the full range of issues it brings to the table and places the bilateral UK-EU relationship in its proper strategic context. Given time and political energy, the EPC could provide just that.