Thread by @pmdfoster

The fact that the UK is engaged in an act of self-marginalisation and self-harm over #Brexit should not distract us from serious issues facing the EU as UK leaves.

So I asked some top EU thinkers 'next for the EU?'....here's what they said 1/thread

telegraph.co.uk/politics/2020/…

First the simplistic narrative. In 2016 everyone thought EU was imploding...Brexit, then Trump etc.

Love this anecdote from @donaldtuskEPP memoir of first thing @realDonaldTrump said to him. "“how Brexit is going and who is next in line to leave?” /2

@donaldtuskEPP @realDonaldTrump But that didn't happen, as we know. @EmmanuelMacron won the 2017 French election, not Marine Le Pen @MLP_officiel and the 2015 immigration crisis went from boil to a simmer after dirty deals with Turkey and Libya.

Case closed? It isn't that simple... /3

@donaldtuskEPP @realDonaldTrump @EmmanuelMacron @MLP_officiel Even those whose job it is lobby for the merits of EU's federal project like @AndrewDuffEU recognise that #Brexit is the "biggest shift in European power politics since the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989."

He worries that the EU is still in "Article 50" mode... /4

But as we saw with Phase one of #Brexit negotiations, the EU's 'highest common denominator' negotiating position is the only way to keep EU27 together - it is a defensive reflex to the forces that #ivankrastev outline in After Europe /5

But as @GuntramWolff tells me, the absence of UK from the UK-French-German 'trinity' is already having a retarding impact on Europe's ability to address its core structural issues...

Trinities self-renew, duopolies risk turning in on themselves, creating stasis.../6

@GuntramWolff So @COdendahl of @CER_EU already sees this in Germany's response to Macron's 'renaissance' narrative, and going forward the UK absence will make the EU 'tend' more protectionist, less able to go deep on defence, Eurozone reform, banking Union etc. /6

@GuntramWolff @COdendahl @CER_EU All of this will put grand limits on European Parliament and @vonderleyen plans for revival conference...at same time UK exit form non-Eurozone countries will cut that bloc to <15% of EU GDP, driving more countries to Euro says @GuntramWolff and more EU protectionism over time/7

@GuntramWolff @COdendahl @CER_EU @vonderleyen The UK, for it's part, will find ways to 'dock' into the EU via the 'E3' format, per Malcolm Chalmers at RUSI @MChalmers_RUSI but will risking being cut out of EU industrial/defence projects - as is already happening. Not the v limited EU mandate on this from y'day.

@GuntramWolff @COdendahl @CER_EU @vonderleyen @MChalmers_RUSI My understanding is that UK wouldn't go back into Galileo even if it was asked

- @BorisJohnson
wont want to crawl back
- 7/8 major industrial elements now dished out, so no econ benefit
- and UK weapons require high-end access other EU MS wont have /9

@GuntramWolff @COdendahl @CER_EU @vonderleyen @MChalmers_RUSI @BorisJohnson Similarly, on the Sixth Generation fighter programme.

Germany (which was part of Typhoon) has gone in with French Gen 6 project; the UK's 'Tempest' has Italy and Sweden.

But in reality neither can really fly solo. We all lose. Europe weakens /10

@GuntramWolff @COdendahl @CER_EU @vonderleyen @MChalmers_RUSI @BorisJohnson The Macron idea of a EU security council is also doomed to fail reckons @MChalmers_RUSI - smaller MS will rebel, and in any event real 'neighbourhood' policy - like sanctions on Russia after Ukraine - would need UK buy-in /11

@GuntramWolff @COdendahl @CER_EU @vonderleyen @MChalmers_RUSI @BorisJohnson None of this means, per sill Brexiteer dreams, that the EU is likely to collapse.

The EU has a handle on migration now and, as wages rise in the Eastern EU argues Andrius Tursa at #Teneo over time the free movement imbalances will start to right themselves..../12

@GuntramWolff @COdendahl @CER_EU @vonderleyen @MChalmers_RUSI @BorisJohnson But the question is where that leaves the EU after #Brexit?

There are perhaps two paths, one set out by #IvanKrastev in his revised edition of After Europe which conceives of the EU forsaking its former missionary zeal to export ideas and becoming a "monastery" /13

@GuntramWolff @COdendahl @CER_EU @vonderleyen @MChalmers_RUSI @BorisJohnson This is a fear echoed by @pisaniferry who fears that #brexit becomes "a station on the Way of the Cross of European decline"...BUT says it doesn't HAVE to be that way if #brexit Britain positions itself not against the EU, but as a beacon to follow/14

lemonde.fr/idees/article/…

@GuntramWolff @COdendahl @CER_EU @vonderleyen @MChalmers_RUSI @BorisJohnson @pisaniferry This, he admits is a long shot.

And it could only happen after the divorce settles down - and divorces usually get ugly despite the best intentions of the separating parties.

It will take two to tango, but everyone should hope that gravity can take over. ENDS