Today's "waiting for the Tunnel" thread is about the relative flexibility of the EU and UK negotiating positions:
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Yesterday, I wrote about the absence of strategic vision to the UK's Brexit project, which has produced any number of problems for pursuing Art.50 and the rest of it
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One of the side-effects of that lack of overarching objective - the 'why are we leaving' element - is that the UK has been relatively biddable on substantive points of negotiation
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Indeed, the entire agenda of Art.50 (the Phase I issues of finances, citizens' rights & @BorderIrish; the use of Phases at all) were all determined by the EU, not the UK
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Older followers will recall the 'row of the summer' about sequencing, promised by D.Davis, which never happened
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In each case, the UK was not able to articulate a strong position on why its preferences/priorities had to take precedence
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We're seeing something similar here with the backstop negotiations now: the UK knows it doesn't like it, but is less sure why it doesn't like, hence moves to accept it, but with assorted things to soften the blow (they think)
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By way of contrast, the EU has been much clearer about its strategic objective in this process: protecting the value of membership
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From that single principle, it's been able to articulate more specific positions, from cherry-picking to financial liabilities, protection of the GFA for IE to keeping the ECJ as arbiter of EU law
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But that clarity of objective doesn't intrinsically mean the EU is less flexible.
Indeed, it allows for a more supple approach, since it allows for multiple paths to reach the same goal
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Indeed, it allows for a more supple approach, since it allows for multiple paths to reach the same goal
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It's meant that the EU has been willing to explore side-bars to the basic backstop, because it has a solid sense of whether these will compromise the underlying intention
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In negotiating theory, we'd talk here about being hard on principles and soft on means: essentially, you can skin a cat in many ways, but each ends up with a skinned cat (no idea why you want one of those, but hey)
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Where the EU is less flexible is in its organisational set-up.
The Commission negotiates on behalf of the member states, and that is done via a mandate (ec.europa.eu/commission/bre…) which imposes strict limits on what can be discussed and agreed
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The Commission negotiates on behalf of the member states, and that is done via a mandate (ec.europa.eu/commission/bre…) which imposes strict limits on what can be discussed and agreed
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This allows states to feel secure that they'll not be presented with a text they hate, but also allows the Commission to say that there are things they simply can't give ground on: "we're literally not allowed to"
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(UK negotiators will have something similar, but less binding (and certainly not publicly available))
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Moreover, once the Commission agrees a text, it still has to get the sign-off from member states, which further constrains what it can do and how far it says it can move off its opening positions (google "GATT Blair House" for a classic of that genre)
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the trade-off of the structure is that the scope of very much more creative solutions is constrained: it's one reason why the EU is relatively slow at negotiating things in general, and trade deals in particular: you're adding in a whole extra level of scrutiny/constraint
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(I'll remind you of that again when negotiations on the future EU-UK relationship begin)
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So to sum up: (in)flexibility in Brexit talks is partly about clarity of strategic intent, partly about structures. The role of personalities in this is relatively small in comparison
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