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Ajouter un commentaireThe origin of a misunderstanding…
Chronology : the UK and Europe
- 1946 – 19. September : Winston Churchill calls for the creation of the United States of Europe during a speech at the University of Zurich.
- 1947 – 14. May : Winston Churchill founds the United Europe Movement, advocating intergovernmental
- cooperation.
- 1948 – 17. March : The Treaty of Brussels is signed by Belgium, France, Luxemburg, the Netherlands, and the UK.
- 1948 – 16. April : The Organisation for European Economic Co-operation (OEEC) is created in order to administer the Marshall Plan, in which the UK participates.
- 1949 – 4. April : The North Atlantic Treaty is signed in Washington by Belgium, Canada, Denmark, France, Iceland, Italy, Luxemburg, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, the UK, and the US.
- 1949 – 3. August : The Council of Europe is founded. Members : Belgium, France, Luxemburg, the Netherlands and the UK. Later members : Denmark, Ireland, Italy, Norway, and Switzerland.
- 1960 – 3. May : The European Free Trade Association is created on the initiative of the UK. Members : Austria, Denmark, Norway, Portugal, Sweden, and Switzerland.
- 1961 – 10. August : The UK opens negotiations for membership of the EEC.
- 1963 – 14. January : De Gaulle vetoes the UK’s application on the grounds of the Nassau agreement signed in 1962 by the US and the UK.
- 1967 – 11. May : The UK reapplies for membership of the EEC. De Gaulle vetoes the application once more, describing the UK as a Trojan horse for US interests in Europe.
- 1969 – 15. June : Georges Pompidou is elected president of France.
- 1972 – 23. April : In a French referendum 68 % of the electors approve of the UK’s accession to the EEC.
- 1973 – 1. January : New member states of the Communities : Denmark, Ireland, and the UK.
- 1974 : The UK keeps its distance to the European “currency snake” after nine member states decide not to maintain US dollar parity following the collapse of the Bretton Woods system (a system of fixed exchange rates).
- 1975 – 5. June : The UK holds a referendum over whether or not to stay in the EEC following the renegotiations (led James Callaghan, the Labour government’s foreign minister) of the terms of Britain’s membership. Not all demands were met, but a correcting mechanism reducing the British contribution to the Community budget was established. Yes-votes win (67 %).
- 1979 – 30. November : The question of the British budgetary contribution brings the negotiations at the Dublin summit to a halt. According to the new Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher, the British contributions to the Community budget do not compare to the benefits received. It is the argument of “fair share.” Margaret Thatcher demands her money back.
- 1984 – 25.-26. June : Having maintained her hard-line policy for five years, Margaret Thatcher achieves her goal during a European Council meeting in Fontainebleau. Future contributions to the Community budget are reduced.
- 1992 – 17. September : Following the currency crisis Great Britain and Italy withdraw from the Exchange Rate Mechanism.
- 1997 – 30. October : The UK announces its decision not to participate in the single currency.
- 1998 – 3.-4. December : Newly elected Tony Blair takes a step towards the creation of a Euro-army. During the EU summit at St. Malo, he and Jacques Chirac express the wish to establish an EU military strike force.
- 2005 – 17.-18. June : France and the UK clash during the Brussels summit held at the beginning of the British EU presidency. Tony Blair remains inflexible on the question of the British rebate.
- 2007 – 22. August : First meeting between Gordon Brown and Angela Merkel amid pressure to hold a referendum on the new EU Treaty. With a France proving increasingly difficult on EU matters, the two countries are trying to find common ground.
Maybe the root of the problem is found at the very beginning of the EU. In fact, since the first steps were taken towards European integration, the relationship between the UK and the EU has often been reminiscent of a soap opera, i.e. entirely made up of misunderstandings, deceptions, resentment, and acts of vengeance.
Consequently, it is easy to forget that one of the great proponents of the European idea after the Second World War was Winston Churchill. Speaking in Zurich in 1946, condemning the descent of the Iron Curtain, and borrowing heavily from Victor Hugo, he put forward the idea of the United States of Europe. This, however, was to be done without the British. As the last superpower in Europe, Great Britain pursued economic, strategic, and political interests (the Commonwealth and the US) which the rest of Europe did not share. This calculation would persist over the following years and serve as justification for not joining the ECSC (1951) and the EEC (1958), leaving the progress of the European Communities in the hands of the French and the Germans.
- Wilson (Labour) was behind the UK’s second application to join the EEC, but it was under Heath’s (Conservative) leadership that membership was achieved. Wilson, back in power in 1975, won the support of the voters in the country’s first nationwide referendum about the UK’s continued membership of the EEC.
Unfortunately for the British, the calculation quickly turned out to be wrong. Having tried to obstruct the European Communities by creating the European Free Trade Association in 1960, the UK soon had to face facts. In order to stem its economic and political decline, it was necessary to join forces with the big and economically strong European countries and try to transform the French-German couple into a ménage à trois. The UK applied to join the EEC in 1961.
Unfortunately for the British, they had not taken General De Gaulle into account (who as a devout Catholic naturally was reluctant to admit these new political bedfellows into the French-German bedroom). He justified his position by taking “England” (as he put it) at her word : no admission to the Communities as long as the Commonwealth still existed. In addition to this, the general was also a fervent defender of French neutrality. Refusing to choose between the Russians and the Americans, he had always considered the UK a Trojan horse for US interests in Europe. The French withdrawal from NATO’s integrated military command and the French independent nuclear deterrence program went hand in hand with this position. Consequently, it was not until president Pompidou replaced the old, but determined general that France withdrew its veto and allowed the UK, applying for the third time, to accede to the EEC in 1973. All is well that ends well ? Well, no. After these humiliations, treacherous Albion dreamt only of vengeance – a dream that would soon come true.
“I want my money back” : storm warning over the European Community budget
From the moment of its accession, the UK expressed its dissatisfaction with the distribution of the European Community budget. The main problem was the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP). Introduced in 1962 when Her Majesty’s subjects still weren’t included in the European family, this policy would gradually come to represent more than half the budget. The CAP, benefiting the French much more than the British agricultural sector, was perceived as a great injustice on the British side of the channel and gave rise to the argument of “fair share,” i.e. the contribution of each member state to the Community budget should correspond to the benefits received by that member state, i.e. the UK wouldn’t pay more than what it got back… Fortunately, at that point in time, Germany did not take the same position to this particular notion of solidarity. Despite compensation attempts (the creation of The European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) in order to develop industrial areas, lagging behind the European average – the selection of Labour politician Roy Jenkins as President of the European Commission), the dispute escalated and reached its culmination with the election of the eurosceptic Margaret Thatcher, who would famously declare : “I want my money back.” Threatening to veto any expansion of the EU budget, the Iron Lady successfully negotiated the British budget rebate in 1984 – 2/3 of the amount by which UK payments exceed EU expenditure (the loss from the overall budget would be covered by the other member states).
- Margaret Thatcher
-
The only woman to have served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom (1979-1990), her nerves of steel served her well in negotiations with both the trade unions and her European “partners” (just think of what Jacques Chirac famously said about the Iron Lady).
The time of the opt-outs
After the budgetary crisis in 1984, the relationship between Maggie and the Community improved slightly. Won over by the prospects of the Single European Market, Mrs Thatcher gave up the right of veto, which she up to that point fiercely had defended. By the end of 1980s, however, the situation would once again become very strained. Having rallied, with some difficulty, to the principle of German reunification, the British Conservatives and their new prime minister, John Major, had to take on an intergovernmental conference, paving the way for a political “European Union” and a monetary integration with the goal of launching the single currency. This was difficult to accept for the politicians, fulminating against the idea of a “European Superstate,” so in order to settle this problem the Maastricht Treaty would introduce the “opt-out,” i.e. the right of certain states not to participate in a specific policy (in a way it is the opposite of “reinforced cooperation,” which allows some countries to adopt common policies on their own without hindrance from other states). The best known of these exemptions is about the Euro (which both Denmark and Sweden have chosen not to adopt). One could make the argument that the reason for the British refusal of the single currency was not so much economic as it was symbolic. By refusing to adopt the Euro the UK was denying the Union one of the main characteristics of regal power.
- Labour Member of Parliament, government minister, and first and only British president of the European Commission (1977-1981). During the Eurosclerosis of the 1970s, he oversaw the creation of the European Monetary System, a forerunner of the Single Currency.
The Economic and Monetary Union was not the only policy in which the UK chose not to participate. The pre-Maastricht intergovernmental conference also resulted in an agreement, extending the competences of the community in terms of social policy. Following the refusal of the UK, this agreement was included in a protocol appended to the treaty, in which Great Britain did not participate. It was not until the Amsterdam Treaty negotiations that the newly elected Tony Blair accepted Great Britain’s participation in the protocol, which could then be fully integrated into the main body of the treaty.
Finally, the “Schengen acquis” brought about the third and last of the British opt-outs. Developed within an intergovernmental framework, in which the UK did not participate, the Schengen acquis abolished checks at the internal borders of the Union and established so-called “compensatory” measures concerning the exterior borders (e.g. : visas). In order to maintain sovereignty over border controls, the UK and Ireland refused to participate in the Schengen aquis as it was about to be integrated into the Amsterdam Treaty, securing the two countries not just an opt-out but also an “opt-in” : the possibility to participate in some or all of the Schengen arrangements if the Council unanimously approved the request. It would not take long for the opt-in to be used. Since 2000 the UK has requested to participate in practically all of the Schengen arrangements, with the exception of the abolition of internal border checks… naturally, all requests were approved by the Council.
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