Richard G. Whitman
This text kinds a part of our collection on views from throughout UCL and past on the altering geopolitical order, and the implications for Europe, the European Union and the EU-UK relationship. Discover extra articles right here.
Because the UK’s common election final summer time, each the EU and UK have acknowledged the strategic significance of working collectively—notably as Europe faces intensifying safety challenges. The Labour Occasion’s ambition for a complete ‘safety pact’—encompassing not solely defence but in addition cross-border intelligence, policing, and judicial cooperation—was signaled effectively upfront of its electoral victory. The brand new UK authorities moved swiftly to enhance bilateral relations with EU member states, notably placing a brand new settlement on safety and defence cooperation with Germany.
But, setting apart the complexities inherent in negotiating such an expansive settlement, the shortage of a proper EU–UK accord on international, safety, and defence coverage means that, regardless of the constructive rhetoric, one thing stays amiss. The delay is more and more troublesome to justify, particularly in mild of Europe’s radically altered safety panorama below a second Trump administration.
President Trump’s ‘peace course of’—designed to settle Russia’s warfare on Ukraine on phrases beneficial to the Putin regime—has conspicuously excluded European allies from negotiations with Moscow. This has fractured what had beforehand been a unified and carefully coordinated transatlantic method to diplomacy and navy help for Kyiv. The breakdown in cooperation has triggered wider questioning of the USA’ position in Europe’s safety and defence.
In response, European governments—together with the UK, and most dramatically, Germany’s incoming administration—have mobilised important new monetary assets for defence. The European Fee and the EU Excessive Consultant have additionally launched formidable initiatives, together with the ReArm Europe Plan/Readiness 2030. These programmes purpose to reclassify member state defence expenditure, reallocate current commitments in the direction of defence procurement, and lift debt funding to speed up Europe’s defence industrial capability and procurement of latest capabilities.
These measures are designed to arrange Europe for the potential withdrawal of US navy capabilities, which at present underpin NATO’s collective defence. A notable indicator of this shift in strategic considering is the rising public debate—notably in Germany and Poland—over whether or not Europe ought to hedge towards a doable finish to the US nuclear deterrent dedication on the continent.
Shifting Past Organised Advert Hocery
Regardless of the absence of substantive provisions for international, safety, and defence coverage within the EU–UK Commerce and Cooperation Settlement, cooperation between the 2 has advanced considerably since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
Each the EU and UK have performed important roles in supporting Ukraine’s defence and resilience. Their joint efforts have demonstrated the sensible advantages of shut cooperation, but this collaboration has remained largely casual and reactive—a type of what could be termed ‘organised advert hocery’—moderately than embedded inside a structured and strategic partnership.
Direct EU–UK cooperation on Ukraine takes place inside a broader framework of coordination that features the G7, NATO, the Ramstein course of, longstanding minilateral preparations such because the Joint Expeditionary Drive, newer groupings just like the E5 (France, Germany, Italy, Poland, and the UK), and in depth bilateral consultations.
These overlapping buildings have proved efficient in making certain the UK stays enmeshed in a fancy however purposeful net of cooperation with the EU and its member states on European safety. Nonetheless, past their shared method to Ukraine, EU–UK collaboration on wider worldwide points—starting from China, local weather change, and vitality, to AI, the Center East, and US efforts to undermine the multilateral buying and selling order—stays fragmented. Whereas their pursuits will not be equivalent, they’re sufficiently aligned to justify framing their relationship as an alliance. Pondering of it in these phrases highlights why a proper settlement based mostly on current EU fashions units ambitions for the connection far too low.
Rethinking the Framework for EU–UK Safety Cooperation
Adopting one of many EU’s current international, safety, and defence cooperation fashions for third international locations is possible however doubtless so as to add minimal worth except framed in several phrases. Agreements granting the UK participation within the EU’s Frequent Safety and Defence Coverage (CSDP) operations can be largely performative, connecting the UK to actions which have grow to be more and more peripheral to the way forward for European navy safety.
The actual debate about Europe’s defence now centres on the way forward for NATO’s European pillar—and the extent to which the alliance might function, or be repurposed, within the occasion of diminished or absent US participation.
A extra important query for EU–UK safety and defence relations issues the UK’s potential participation within the defence industrial initiatives proposed by the European Fee and the EU Excessive Consultant of their current Defence White Paper. Since Brexit, the evolution of EU defence industrial coverage has left the UK exterior the scope of its most built-in frameworks—not like non-EU NATO member Norway, which advantages from European Financial Space (EEA) membership.
An exception has (understandably) been made for Ukraine, granting it participation on phrases much like Norway’s. Nonetheless, no equal provide has been prolonged to the UK. This omission undermines the messaging of each side and calls into query their said dedication to a renewed and deepened safety and defence relationship. Extending the identical phrases to the UK would have despatched an unequivocal sign that each London and Brussels are severe about future cooperation.
The Could summit: Coming too late?
There may be hypothesis that this challenge will likely be addressed on the EU–UK summit in Could, doubtlessly by means of an settlement that alters the UK’s standing inside EU defence industrial preparations. But when such a change is on the horizon, the present method to signalling it’s muddled.
The summit might effectively mark a brand new part of détente between London and Brussels, however the publicly demonstrated tempo of progress stays worryingly sluggish, notably given the urgency of the safety challenges Europe now faces. The absence of a proper EU–UK safety and defence partnership is an more and more obtrusive omission in efforts to assemble a coherent European response to the evolving safety order.
At a time when Europe should put together for the potential lack of US ensures, the EU and UK can’t afford to overlook the second.
Professor Richard G. Whitman is Professor of Politics and Worldwide Relations on the Battle Evaluation Analysis Centre, College of Kent. He’s at present a Senior Fellow with the Financial and Social Analysis Council’s UK in a Altering Europe initiative and a Senior Affiliate Fellow on the Royal United Companies Institute (RUSI).
Notice: The views expressed on this put up are these of the writer, and never of the UCL European Institute, nor of UCL.
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