--- title: "The UK and the EU After Brexit – How Hard or Soft a Landing?" url: "https://ebooks.socialeurope.eu/4/whither-social-rights-in-post-brexit-europe/47/the-uk-and-the-eu-after-brexit-how-hard-or-soft-a-landing" --- #The UK and the EU After Brexit – How Hard or Soft a Landing? _Vivien Schmidt_ The future of both the United Kingdom and the European Union are in question, and not just because of Brexit. The eurozone crisis, the refugee crisis, the ongoing security crisis and now the Covid-19 pandemic have been equally problematic. How Brexit happens, whether very hard or somewhat soft, will certainly have a significant impact on the EU. But, equally importantly, the future of European integration—its form and content—will also have an impact on the UK, not just in terms of economics and trade but also with regard to social rights. For optimal results, the future of the EU is best conceived as differentiated with a ‘soft’ rather than hard core, constituted by different clusters of members in overlapping policy communities. But the EU has to change not only the conceptualisation of its form, by becoming more open to greater differentiation of membership in its many policy communities. It must also rethink the application of the rules in such communities. Only by becoming more flexible in policy implementation, to allow for greater national political sovereignty along with greater decentralisation of economic decision-making, will the EU most optimally manage its own future and its relationship with the UK. To succeed with such differentiated integration, the EU at the same time needs to guarantee citizens’ social rights across Europe. ##The EU’s policy crises The EU today has too many members with too many diverging interests and ideas to be able to reach optimal agreements on deeper integration across policy areas, in particular given EU unanimity rules for treaties. Although many such divergences have long existed, the problems have become more acute as a result of the concatenating crises in key areas over the past decade, such as money (the euro crisis), borders (the immigration and refugee crisis), security (terrorism and the neighbourhood) and the continuing integrity of the EU itself (Brexit). Eurozone governance went too far in deepening integration in the wrong way, by ‘governing by rules and ruling by numbers’ (Schmidt, 2020a) while failing to institute the mutual risk-sharing instruments necessary for any fixed-currency zone to flourish. Austerity and structural-reform programmes reduced worker protections and welfare benefits while contributing to rising inequalities and poverty across Europe, but in particular southern Europe. In other areas, integration has not gone far enough. In security and defence policy, deeper integration is needed along with continued differentiation, with more co-operation and targeted investment through any of the many recently created instruments. Refugee and migrant policy also requires deeper integration through EU-wide agreement on principles of treatment, accompanied by more differentiated integration regarding the modalities of implementation—for example with positive incentives in place of imposed quotas and with a variety of refugee-support and EU mobility-adjustment funds. The Covid-19 pandemic has, surprisingly, intensified these policy problems yet pointed towards possible solutions. The crisis response has broken with past orthodoxies: on eurozone rules, by suspending requirements on debt and deficit; on competition policy, by relaxing state-aid rules; on Schengen border controls, through nationally imposed border closings across Europe; and on migration and refugee policy, with migrant flows ended through border closures. At the same time, after an initial delay resembling a ‘_déjà vu_ all over again’ reprise of the eurozone crisis, the member states agreed to EU-level initiatives and co-ordination in an unprecedented range of areas. These targeted not only overall liquidity, through the European Central Bank’s major pandemic bond-buying programmes, but also social rights via SURE, a short-term in-work job-support programme to reinforce member states’ own efforts. They included a new health agency, EU4Health, and a major new European recovery fund, the Resilience and Recovery Facility (RFF)—financed through EU-level bonds, made up of grants (€390 billion) and loans (€360 million) to go to member states most affected by the crisis. Such a fund is essential to combat the coming economic recession while addressing the rising inequalities between northern Europe, which was able to inject massive amounts of money to stem job losses and business closures, and southern Europe, unable to do as much—being economically weakened by the eurozone crisis and most affected by the pandemic, and therefore desperately in need of grant-based funding. Moreover, on social rights specifically, not only is the RFF to provide funding for education and reskilling and digital infrastructure. In her ‘State of the Union’ speech, the European Commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, specifically promised a framework for minimum wages through collective agreements or statutory minimum wages, a new pact on migration and robust action against climate change. One silver lining from Brexit is that British leaders are no longer able to impose their usual veto on innovations leading to deeper integration. It is useful to recall that Britain is itself partly responsible for the state of the EU today: UK membership involved active resistance to any quasi-federal ambitions, energetic pursuit of neoliberal deregulation and enthusiastic support for enlargement to the east (as further market opportunities). In large measure, the UK succeeded in turning the EU into a force for supply-side economics and minimal political authority. Moreover, while the watchword of the Brexiters was ‘take back control’, the ironic truth is that, through its opt-outs, London never relinquished control over any significant aspect of sovereignty: money, borders or defence (Schmidt, 2020b). Whatever the economic impact of the pandemic, the UK will not take part in this EU solidarity and the boost to social rights across Europe. ##The EU’s political crisis In conjunction with these policy-related crises has come an overarching political crisis. It results not only from the EU’s failure to resolve its multiple policy crises but also from the impact of the very existence of the EU on national democracies. As policy-making has moved up to the European level, politics has remained national. Citizen concerns about their loss of political control along with opposition to particular EU policies have translated into increasing electoral support for populist anti-system parties, the election of populist governments prone to illiberal practices regarding the rule of law (primarily in central and eastern Europe) and, of course, Brexit. For the political dangers of populism to be fully put to rest, the EU needs to recognise its own failures, not only in terms of its policies and politics but also in terms of its procedures and organisation. National populism on the extreme right, economic populism on the extreme left and indeed Brexit are all signs that a lot has gone wrong with the EU. Something needs to be done to address citizens’ rising concerns about the EU undermining national identity and sovereignty through its immigration and refugee policies, or about the EU increasing socio-economic inequalities while weakening national economies through eurozone austerity and structural-reform policies. The answer must be found not only in improving the policies in view of ensuring European citizens’ social rights across the EU but also by re-envisioning the EU’s own organisational structure and procedures through more differentiated integration. ##The state of differentiated integration The EU’s organisational structure is actually already highly differentiated. While all member-states are part of the single market, membership in other policy areas is variable, including Schengen borders, common security and defence policy, the Charter of Fundamental Rights, and the single currency. Differentiated integration is also increased by the presence in the EU of ‘outside insiders’, such as Norway, Iceland and Switzerland, which participate in the single market as well as in a range of other EU policy communities, including Schengen and common security and defence policy, but don’t have a vote. Once the UK has negotiated its future relationship with the EU, it is likely to constitute another kind of differentiated integration, the form of which remains unclear at the moment. The EU was never going to become the federal ‘super-state’ the British in particular feared or the United States of Europe federalists had long envisioned. But does differentiated integration entail a two-speed Europe: a Europe with a ‘hard core’ centered around the eurozone, as evoked by successive French leaders, or even a Europe completely _à la carte_? The fear with a multi-speed Europe is that it will become Europe _à la carte_, and will fall apart as member states pick and choose the communities into which they opt in or out. The problem with a hard-core Europe is that there is no guarantee that the core players, France and Germany, would be able to reach the necessary productive agreement across policy areas. They certainly did not in the euro area, up until the Covid-19 pandemic. Such a hard core might also create a deeper rift between the core and the rest. And why assume that a cluster of member states which takes the lead in one policy area (the eurozone) would have the ability, let alone the will or imagination, to lead in the others (such as security or migration)? What is more, a hard-core EU would be likely to alienate the post-Brexit UK, which might very well ask ‘why deal with the EU at all?’ if insiders, led by the Franco-German duo, were to set the trajectory for the remaining outsiders. ##Re-envisioning the EU as ‘soft-core’ Europe Rather than conceiving of EU differentiation as coming at multiple speeds or by way of a hard core, the EU would do better to see its future as consisting of a ‘soft-core’ Europe. A soft-core EU is made up of the overlapping participation of different clusters of member states in the EU’s many policy communities—all administered by a single set of EU institutions, all with voice across communities but with a vote only in those areas in which they participate. In this context, the decision-making rules would also require revision, with the unanimity rule abandoned in favor of ‘constitutional’ treaties amendable by two-thirds or four-fifths majorities, and with treaty-based laws becoming ordinary legislation, amendable through the co-decision mode of EU governance (Schmidt, 2019). Seeing the future of EU differentiated integration as consisting of a soft core of multiple clusters of member states, participating in overlapping policy communities, would allow for any duo or trio of member states to exercise leadership in any given community. But while some policy areas, as discussed earlier, would require more co-ordinated integration, such as security and defence or immigration and refugee policy, others would demand greater decentralisation, such as management of the eurozone. Moreover, were some members to engage in deeper integration, such as pledging their own resources to a common eurozone budget, their representatives would be the only ones to vote, although everyone would exercise voice. In addition, where non-EU countries opted into certain policy communities, such as the Schengen border-free zone in the cases of Norway and Switzerland, they should have voice and vote. This could equally apply to their participation in the single market. In such a soft-core Europe, the UK could productively join some policy communities while staying out of others. Although it would certainly choose to stay outside the eurozone or Schengen borders, it could reclaim a leadership role in common security and defence policy, as one of two European nuclear powers. As for the single market and concerns about freedom of movement, a migration ‘brake’ combined with a mobility fund could address the Brexiters’ fears about EU freedom of movement—especially during this time of pandemic when the UK has been feeling the pinch of lack of workers for essential services, such as in healthcare and seasonal agriculture. But soft-core differentiation also has certain common requirements—including one set of laws, overseen by the European Court of Justice and affirmed by national courts, and one set of overarching institutions, including the European Commission, Council and Parliament. In other words, there can be no differentiation in the EU’s core commitments to the rule of law and democratic principles, free and fair elections, independence of the judiciary and freedom of the press. But any number of specialised institutions may be fit for purpose in any given policy community. As for the UK, some form of negotiated equivalences would be necessary to accommodate demands for continued British regulatory autonomy and legal authority. ##Conclusion In sum, the future of EU governance is very open. It is best conceived not as a hard-core Europe centred around the eurozone—let alone a future ‘super-state’—but as made up of a soft core of overlapping clusters of member states in the EU’s many policy communities. In this context, increasing flexibility in the EU’s legislative and policy processes, along with decentralisation to the benefit of the member states, would enhance policy effectiveness as well as democratic legitimacy. And it would likely make the EU more attractive even to a Brexiting UK. The EU’s recent initiatives in response to the Covid-19 pandemic also suggest that it is finally willing to address the erosion of citizens’ social rights over the past decade, not only by suspending some of the most deleterious rules but also by creating space for member states to reinforce national solidarities in labour and welfare while promising to reform migration. For the UK to flourish in such an EU, it would need not just to internalise such a soft-core vision of the EU’s future but also engage with it through softer, consensus-seeking deliberation. Although British policy-makers might very well want to maintain their special status with regard to money and borders, they might not with regard to the other challenges facing the EU, including security, energy, the environment and, of course, Covid-19. The UK cannot exist in isolation. At the same time, the EU needs effective leadership across its many policy communities. And it also needs the UK, if only as an active member in some of those communities. ###References Schmidt, Vivien A (2020a), _Europe’s Crisis of Legitimacy: Governing by Rules and Ruling by Numbers in the Eurozone_, Oxford: Oxford University Press ——— (2020b), ‘The EU after Brexit—hard or soft?’, in J Laible and S Greer (eds), _Brexit and the European Union_, Manchester: Manchester University Press ——— (2019), ‘The future of differentiated integration: a “soft-core” multi-clustered Europe of overlapping policy communities’, _Comparative European Politics_ 17, 2: 294-315