British Prime Minister Theresa May meets in London tomorrow with her Spanish counterpart Mariano Rajoy amidst a frenzied week of Brexit diplomacy for the United Kingdom premier.
The visit of Rajoy, who has set up a Brexit task force in London to help the more-than 130,000 Spanish nationals living in Britain, will underline how each European Union (EU) state has distinctive political, economic and social interests that inform its stance on the UK’s exit.
While Brussels depicts the EU-27 as unified on Brexit, positions of the countries vary according to factors such as trade ties and patterns of migration with the UK, domestic election pressures, and levels of Eurosceptical support within their populaces.
The divergent, and complex positions of EU states thus range from the UK’s fellow non-Eurozone member, Sweden, whose political and economic interests are likely to be broadly aligned with UK positions, to countries that have more complicated postures, including France.
Complicated picture
Spain, the Eurozone’s fourth largest economy, benefits economically from around 300,000 UK citizens residing in the country, and has a significant trade deficit with the United Kingdom which — other things being equal — favours softer negotiating positions on Brexit.
Yet, this picture is complicated by other factors, including Gibraltar’s future.
While Spanish Foreign Minister Alfonso Dastis has hinted that Madrid will not veto a final Brexit deal over Gibraltar, it has invited the UK government to negotiations on the UK overseas territory on the southern Spanish coast, including proposals for joint sovereignty.
The fact that Rajoy may yet play hardball in Brexit negotiations on this issue is reflected in his reported remarks to May in October 2016 that such a joint sovereignty model will, under a ‘hard Brexit’ scenario of the United Kingdom leaving the European Single Market and Customs Union, be the only way for Gibraltar to secure continued access to the European Single Market which is key for its economy.
Tension
The scope for tension between Madrid and London is underlined by the fact that Gibraltar remains strongly opposed to enhanced political ties with Spain.
And UK Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson has doubled-down on this with his own “completely implacable, marmoreal and rocklike resistance” to Spain’s joint sovereignty proposals.
Madrid’s negotiating position towards Brexit is also shaped by the secessionist threat from Catalonia and Basque. Spain was strongly opposed to Scotland’s independence in the 2014 referendum, and will seek to scotch any attempts by that country, and/ or also Northern Ireland and Wales, to try to secure special status in the EU post-Brexit.
Just as the Spanish and UK governments want to secure the rights of their citizens are comparable, if not identical, post-Brexit as before, Poland’s negotiating stance in the negotiations will be heavily informed by its seeking of similar guarantees for the approximately 850,000 Polish-born residents in the United Kingdom.
Indeed, Poles are now the most common non-UK country of birth for people across the nation.
For added leverage, Poland is lobbying here as part of the Visegrad group which also comprises Hungary, Slovakia, and Czechoslovakia. Collectively, there are more than a million Visegrad nationals in the United Kingdom and, while the group does not have a ‘qualified majority’ in Brussels to veto a Brexit deal, it may seek a wider, blocking coalition if its citizenry’s rights to live and work across the nation are not enshrined.
It is France, however, that may have the most difficult posture to the UK’s exit. France has long had a complex, contradictory relationship with the UK in the context of EU affairs and President Emmanuel Macron has been accused by UK ministers of holding up progress in negotiations this year.
Macron’s Brexit positioning, including his robust stance on future UK access to the Single Market, is reinforced by broader French plans to tout Paris as a competing financial centre to London which began in earnest under the presidency of Francois Hollande.
This saw former finance minister Michel Sapin and Hollande’s Brexit Special Envoy Christian Noyer, former Bank of France governor, openly promoting Paris with key banks.
This has continued under Macron and only last month he hailed the decision to relocate the European Banking Agency (EBA) to Paris from London as “recognition of France’s attractiveness and European commitment”.
French officials hope that the EBA’s relocation will help bring many thousands of UK banking jobs to the French capital, which is competing with other financial centres, including Frankfurt, post-Brexit, for UK banking jobs with many on the continent asserting that London cannot now remain the main Euro-denominated financial clearing centre.
During this year’s presidential election campaign, Macron also said that he will seek to renegotiate the 2003 Les Touquet migration agreement. This allows the UK to operate border controls in France and has kept thousands of migrants — heading for Britain — on the French side of the channel.
Taken overall, distinctive interests of EU states are adding to the complexity of Brexit negotiations. At the same time as Brussels seeks unified EU stances under the leadership of Chief Negotiator Michel Barnier, UK officials will therefore continue to try to shape positions of countries that could be key allies or foes, including Spain when May meets Rajoy tomorrow.
Andrew Hammond is an Associate at LSE IDEAS at the London School of Economics.
