The UK and European Union 

Recent opinion polls show an apparent majority preference for UK re entry to the European Union. But after recent history, the UK’s attempts to “reset” its EU relationship are not as straightforward as they seem. For starters, there is a total absence of UK political leadership or strategy on what might be an appropriate role for post Brexit “Global UK”. For the EU there was always concern about how the outcome from any negotiations might be interpreted by the UK. 

These ongoing uncertainties are framed by recent history. In its 2005 General Election Manifesto Labour said “We will put it (the Lisbon Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union) to the British people in a referendum and campaign whole-heartedly for a ‘Yes’ vote to keep Britain a leading nation in Europe” (Labour Party, 2005, p. 84). Despite this manifesto commitment and referenda in France, Ireland the Netherlands (twice), for the UK it was as an essentially low profile event without a referendum that Gordon Brown in December 2007 signed the Lisbon Treaty. “The UK will give up its veto in many policy areas as the EU introduces more qualified majority voting, but Mr Brown said the changes were in the country’s interests (BBC News, 2007). Brown was accused by William Hague MP as Leader of the Opposition of being unwilling to be photographed while signing. Brown’s former Downing Street Director of Communications has now been appointed as Second Permanent Secretary in the Cabinet Office in charge of European Union and International Economic Affairs. 

Michel Barnier, the EU’s Brexit Chief Negotiator, often used to wonder with whom he was negotiating, having been labelled in the UK as “the most dangerous man in Europe” (Barnier, 2021). “The success of (David) Frost in communicating that he had the ear of Johnson – in a way that previous UK negotiators had not necessarily done – made him the obvious choice for the UK, just as it also reaffirmed the EU’s priorities to pin the UK down on any text” (Usherwood, 2021, p. 117). “Against such difficulties, talk of changing UK red lines on customs union or single market can only be a distraction, since there’s no way either the UK or EU will be ready to take the relationship further if it can’t first be normalised (Henig, 2025). 

As a result, outcomes for the EU and UK from the 2018 Withdrawal Agreement and January 2020 Trade and Cooperation Agreement were not clear. “At most, the final treaty took the harder edges off the EU’s preferences, while still tying the UK into a system of governance and dispute settlement that could have major effects” (Usherwood, 2021, p. 120). 

In the absence of UK political leadership, the pace for any renegotiation is already being set by others. Though recent UK Government policy developments represent a softening up process for the UK’s rejoining the EU, which are heralded by UK and European media, academics and think tanks as a “good thing”, there has been no real democratic debate. The tone and pace of the UK’s “reset” with the EU is being led by liberal democrat blogs and think tanks. “

“Continuing doggedly with the TCA will be increasingly futile. Britain’s political position will grow more unstable. In Brussels and other European capitals, it will not be readily understood why London does not file a fresh membership application”  (Duff, 2025, p. 12). 

“Now we have a government and House of Commons overwhelmingly filled with pro-EU MPs, surely it’s time to start rowing back towards Calais? How perverse it seems that Britain’s passionately pro-EU prime minister adamantly refuses any hint of rejoining, not the EU, the customs union nor the single market, and not even EFTA. Why?” (Toynbee, 2024)

Among the more forthright and specific has been Bertelsmann Stiftung in Berling, which reckons that (Benford & Schwarzer, 2021):

“Shifts in EU interests require a reassessment of relations with the United Kingdom.” This proposed to extend the territory of the UK’s Trade and Cooperation Agreement in 2026, to become be aligned with the EU’s new economic security strategy of June 2023, which stresses the need to “intensify the cooperation with third countries on economic security issues.” 

Bertelsmann is influential in Brussels circles, so that its contribution may be more readily transformed into EU policy. Many in the European Union might welcome a UK return because of its NATO commitment and increasing level of defence spending, and because the French, German and Italian economies, as the previous drivers of European growth, are all faltering in different ways. Rachel Reeves has already attended a EuroGroup finance ministers’ meeting and David Lammy is invited to attend the EU’s Council of Foreign Ministers’ meetings. 

Funding EU Defence and Security 

But all this takes place against the EU’s rapidly changing and unstable background. For starters, any EU defence spending faces a major problem since the 1992 Maastricht Treaty, as updated by the Treaty of Lisbon in 2007, under Article 41.2 stresses that the EU Budget cannot be used for defence and security. To circumvent this restriction, various EU “work arounds” have included “off budget” instruments, controlled by Member States’ officials in the European Council, paid by Member States’ contributions, and managed by the European Economic Assistance Service staff. Little of this is directly accountable to the European Parliament and is camouflaged within NATO as support for Ukraine against Russia and Vladimir Putin. 

Especially with failing economies in France, Germany and Italy, the EU cannot afford to fund NATO defence and security, support for Ukraine, implementation of the Draghi Report on European Competitiveness and the Cohesion Fund for less prosperous regions. The Defence Coordinator at the new EU Directorate General for Defence and Security has admitted that financing his €400 billion defence investment gap must necessarily mean depleting other EU programmes. The Commission’s new Defence and Security White Paper will soon show this.

There is no overarching “European Constitution” for any of this, since throughout Europe there is no single view of the European Union, with 27 Member States each having different aspirations. All this offers a slender theoretical or practical basis for the operation of EU institutions, especially for the Council of Ministers and Commission, when these seek to intervene within Member States. This causes major problems for enforcing any sanctions, in supporting TFEU Article 2 on promoting European values and in using Article 7, which seeks to isolate an individual Member State from the rest of the European Union. 

Because of these limitations of the 2007 Treaty, the EU has invented other bodies, including the European External Action Service, the European Defence Agency, European Union Institute for Security Studies and European Political Community. Effectively these external agencies enable EU policy to emerge and progress without democratic oversight or control. When policy emerges into any kind of “democratic daylight,” a “grand coalition” of EU Christian and Social Democrats, encouraged by EU Commission Presidents like Ursula von der Leyen, has usually enabled its more formal adoption as EU policy. A good example of this will be the Commission’s forthcoming White Paper on Defence and Security, to be published soon by the new Defence Directorate General of the Commission, a brand new DG with a brand new Commissioner, already operating without agreed duties or boundaries. 

There are numerous precedents for these Treaty “work arounds.” The European Defence Fund was created in 2016 with its narrative written by a so called “Group of Personalities”, recruited from defence industries and defence think tanks. In similar vein, the European Peace Facility (EPF) was established in March 2021 to finance military operations under EU’s Common Foreign and Security Policy, by reimbursing member states’ expenses. It has a financial ceiling for 2021-2027 of €5,692 billion. Though now primarily used for supporting Ukraine, the EPF had been originally created as an instrument to maximise EU clout in other regions, especially the Middle East and Africa. So, EU work arounds are now intercontinental! 

This “diversion without discussion” formula was again demonstrated by the London based International Institute of Strategic Studies (IISS) report to the September 2024 Prague Defence Summit, showing that European NATO members’ spending in 2024 was 50% higher than in 2014. Its “Building Defence Capacity in Europe” unambiguously regrets “that Environmental and Social Governance ambitions represent a barrier to investment in defence” and that future defence expenditure will need to be diverted from previously determined budgets elsewhere. 

The European Peace Facility and other “off budget” initiatives are mostly driven by NGOs, think tanks and academics, often without the knowledge of their own higher education institutions. These new policy makers now form an “EU deep state” and constantly discuss, promote and disseminate opinions as progress or a “good thing”. These operate through bodies like Chatham House, UK in a Changing Europe, the IE Global Policy Centre, the Istituto Affari Internazionali, European Council on Foreign Relations and Bertelsmann Stiftung.

Because the EU’s legitimacy rests on the slender constitutional basis of the 2007 Treaty, all this also contributes to consolidating and expanding the economic and social neoliberalism on which the EU and its institutions are based. Self promoted think tank and higher education ‘expertise’ feeds into EU structures to become the language of EU politics.

No matching democracy 

This ongoing lack of democratic underpinning for EU institutions is important for any understanding European political groupings. The European Parliament functions as a consultative assembly rather than as the initiator of any EU legislation – which originates in the Commission. The EP does not propose and is only consulted on legislation. Though the Parliament now has the technical power to approve the President and all European Commissioners, at the beginning of December 2024, the entire Commission was agreed using a so called political “Platform Agreement” mechanism (the Presidents of the Council, Commission and Parliament) supported by Christian and Social Democrats and the liberal “Renew” EP Group, which includes Macron’s “En Marche” party.  So a brand new EU Commission has been installed in its entirety for five years without appropriate scrutiny. 

Various EU Treaties effectively constitutionalise an EU version of the ‘Washington Consensus’ of 1981, where the limited role of the state and expanding private sectors are not disputed. Various commentators have pointed out that nowhere else have the rules of the market been given constitutional status without any matching powers for electorally accountable bodies. It is this interpretation which is increasingly challenged by newer EU Members from Central and Eastern Europe, as described below. The Parliament’s political groups function as a conduit for the distribution of various research and administration funds, as a reflection of practice of practice in many national legislatures. To be recognised as an EP Parliamentary Group to receive these funds needs 23 MEPs from seven different Member States. Within these Groups, since it is difficult to persuade all their group members to align their votes, though their leaders engage in extra Parliamentary discussion, they often cannot bring their entire political groups onside. 

Central and Eastern Europe 

German, French and Italian economic problems have brought increasing difficulties for funding EU Structural Funds and the various “off budget” initiatives above, so that outcome of any election of Central and Eastern European Heads of State and legislatures, including Poland, Hungary, Czechia, Slovakia, Bulgaria and Romania, is now politically critical to the whole EU project. The result of the June 2024 European Parliament Elections confirmed that the combined Christian Democrat (EPP) and Social Democrat (S&D) membership of 324 no longer forms a majority out of its 720 members. They are now challenged by the new Patriots for Europe Group, led by the Hungarian Fidesz and France’s National Rally, with 84 members as the third largest group. Alternative fur Deutschland (AfD) now leads a new Europe of Sovereign Nations Group with 25 MEPs, mostly from East Germany. So Patriots “sovereigntist” nations, many from Central and Eastern Europe, now have 109 or 15% of EP members.

Though Austrian MEPs in the European Parliament will not change as a result of recent Austrian Elections, under the Parliament’s List Voting System, where Member State government nominations fill vacant places instead of by elections, this number will increase so that these opposition groups may soon have 20% or 25% of votes in the Parliament. Confronted by this block, von der Leyen will face increasing difficulty delivering her agenda. 

Based on a double majority system, voting in the Council of Ministers is hardly more stable. Approval requires 55% of Member States – 15 out of 27 Members, which must also represent 65% of the total EU population. A blocking minority can be established by little more than 45% of Member States or by countries representing at least 35% of the Member States as long as there is a minimum of four states. The current media focus on Romania, Moldova and Georgia (though the latter two are candidate countries and not yet Member States) recognises that, coupled with a new Austrian Chancellor and his Freedom Party, there will soon be a possibility that Hungary, Romania, and Slovakia may soon lead sufficient support to block legislation. Already, parties politically aligned with the Europe of Sovereign Nations and Patriots of Europe Groups are members of Government Coalitions in the Netherlands, Finland, Denmark and Sweden, most without enthusiasm for supporting NATO and Ukraine. 

This background of Central and Eastern European Members is not widely understood or reported. For them, any extension of EU constitutional liberalism and the effective exclusion of economic policy from their national democratic processes has eroded any rationalist foundations of liberal policies. EU elections no longer offer a grand choice between competing worldviews and have instead become referenda on Brussels elites. With this ending of any grand ideological and political narratives, these newer Member States do not view the EU’s “third way” centrism as transforming their contemporary democratic politics. 

While Western Europe’s attitudes toward the rest of the world have been shaped by colonialism with its emotional legacy, Central and Eastern European (CEE) Member States have emerged from a disintegration of empires and accompanying outbreaks of ethnic cleansing. As an example, the Treaty of Versailles in 1919 signed away two thirds of the Hungary’s previous territory. It is CEE Europeans’ deeply rooted mistrust of a perceived EU cosmopolitan and centrist mindset that stands out most sharply since its loyalty belongs to Brussels with its perceived EU liberal ‘consensus’ elite. 

CEE countries are themselves increasingly divergent. “Many of the countries of Central Europe …..have moved successfully from communism to liberal democracy, having gone through the same phase of liberalisation without democracy as other European countries did during the nineteenth century (Zakaria, 1997, p. 28), though “the increase in state coordination in the economy that took place globally after 2007 in the CEE countries turned out to be disproportionately greater than in the countries of Western democratic capitalism” (Riedel & Anusik, 2024, p. 464). Similarly, “the EU’s regulatory framework for social policy, outlined mostly in soft-law measures, was very expensive (especially active labour-market policies) or undesirable (as was the case with gender mainstreaming), and was subject to political contestation in Central-East Europe” (Hungler, 2022, p. 210). 

In Poland “PiS is a more classically populist party that has significantly modified neoliberalism in the sphere of social policy, as well as in industrial policy, though to a lesser degree in the latter. The social policies of PiS are more popular than those of Fidesz, entailing a lower risk of alienating the working-class electorate (Scheiring, 2021, p. 1587). “The economic approach of the populist governments in Poland or Slovakia …. does not differ substantially from the policies of their liberal predecessors” (Krastev, 2007, p. 62).

Bulgaria especially has responded to become more compliant with EU Commission oversight, especially with the Commission’s funding of its NGOs. “Established NGOs in Bulgaria such as the Centre for Liberal Strategies and the Centre for the Study of Democracy have been pivotal in exposing corruption and creating pressure for transparency and accountability in government” (Spendzharova & Vachudova, 2014, p. 51)

“Slovakia never installed a comprehensive developmental state comparable to Poland or the Czech Republic, so the country is becoming more and more disintegrated economically, looking increasingly like Hungary. Social disintegration is also significantly higher in Slovakia than in the Czech Republic by most measure” (Scheiring, 2021, p. 1585)

All “the Visegrád countries have experienced income growth exceeding the EU average, outperforming most post-Soviet states. However, they have also seen growing geographical and income inequality, labour market precarity, jobless growth, household debt and a deepening gap between domestic and foreign producers” (Scheiring, 2021, p. 1591)

Above all, CEE countries do not look to older Member States for political guidance. “The processes of European integration and globalization have profoundly changed the essence of the political in Europe. The Cold War–era liberal democracies of Western Europe, organized around the antagonism between left and right, between labour and capital, can no longer serve as a model for Central and Eastern Europe. (Krastev, 2007, p. 62)

What Comes Next? 

As shown above, the dominance of external and off budget expertise and technocracy in many external and unaccountable bodies has become the language of EU politics. Von der Leyen so far has integrated all of this with developments in NATO, so that the EU has effectively become NATO’s defence subcontractor. But her coalition is falling apart. For Green votes she made promises for a Green New Deal which she will find difficult to deliver, as shown by opposition from farmers to her new Mercosur trade agreement in Latin America. 

All this raises fundamental issues for the future of the European Union, especially how it might continue underpinning its 1989 version of neoliberalism. But one thing is clear. The European project now faces an environment increasingly dominated by different national and populist governments, many of which strongly oppose its perceived centralist and elitist neoliberalism. 

“The real clash is between elites that are becoming ever more suspicious of democracy and angry publics that are becoming ever more hostile to liberalism” (Krastev, 2007, p. 63). With an increasing number of national populist governments, it is gradually becoming more obvious that the EU now faces the need to reinvent itself to survive. The critical issue will be who has the staying power – the EU apparatus or various emerging national governments. Whether or not the EU may continue as a central part of Europe’s future depends on whether it recognises its need for reinvention. The signs are not good and became very clear during the confirmation of von de Leyen’s College of Commissioners in December 2024, where basic political necessity without detailed scrutiny generated a politically opaque “platform agreement” between Christian and Social Democrats and Renew. Having the confidence to recognise and embrace this uncertainty may represent a first step towards the political reinvention of Europe. 

References

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Leslie Huckfield is an Associate Lecturer and Honorary Research Associate at the Open University, specialising in European Union matters and a Visiting Fellow and researcher at Glasgow Caledonian University, supervising doctoral students.

He was a Member of the House of Commons from 1967 till 1983 and a Member of the European Parliament from 1984 till 1989, where he was a member of the Socialists and Democrats Group and Vice Chair of the Parliament’s Transport Committee. He is active in the European Parliament Former Members Association.

He was Under Secretary of State (a Government Minister) in the Department of Industry from 1976 till 1979 and a member of the Labour Party National Executive Committee from 1978 till 1982. In 1980 he was chair of the Labour NEC Working Group on Workers’ Cooperatives which made recommendations for Labour’s 1983 General Election Manifesto.