An UK-EU defence deal is back on agenda: what could it look like?
It’s easy to forget that an EU-UK treaty on defence and security policy, as part of London’s departure from the bloc, was on the table until the latter stages of the Brexit negotiations.
That idea, initially proposed by prime minister Theresa May but quickly dumped by her successor Boris Johnson in 2019, is now back on the agenda — though MEPs and diplomats were cagey on what it might look like at a hearing in the European Parliament’s foreign affairs committee earlier this week.
"There’s potential to build a partnership," Lindsay Croisdale-Appleby, the UK’s ambassador to the EU, told MEPs, though he was, unsurprisingly, careful not to be drawn on whether a new Labour administration, the likely outcome of a British general election later this year, would lead to a major change of direction.
"I think any UK government will want to make European defence collaboration work," he noted.
However, the UK diplomat pointed out that Russia’s ongoing war with Ukraine means that "we are in a new world", while there is now recognition on both sides of the Channel of the implications of long-term underfunding of defence. The other changes are improved EU-UK relations since Rishi Sunak became UK prime minister, and the prospects of a second Donald Trump presidency in the US.
"EU-UK relations are now in a positive and constructive phase," said Nathalie Loiseau, a liberal lawmaker and France’s former Europe minister, adding that there was now potential for a "broad and ambitious framework with the UK" on foreign, defence and security policy.
Sunak plays host
Sunak is due to host the next summit of the European Political Community summit, the new forum gathering non-EU European states driven by French president Emmanuel Macron.
However, it seems unlikely that Sunak’s government will engage in substantive discussions on closer EU security cooperation before a general election later this year.
In the interim, the UK has struggled to add meat to the bones of what ‘Global Britain’ outside the EU should look like. The Aukus security partnership in the Indo-Pacific region which commits the UK and the US to help Australia acquire nuclear-powered submarines is one of the few alternative concrete examples.
On the EU front, Croisdale-Appleby pointed to the UK’s recent military collaboration with Germany, Sweden, Italy and Spain, but these are ad hoc rather than structured agreements, and France has indicated that a series of bilateral agreements won’t work.
MEPs also know the state of opinion polls in the UK which give the opposition Labour party a 20+ point lead over prime minister Sunak’s government.
Tonino Picula, a Croatian centre-left MEP, commented that a new government "probably led by the Labour party" would offer a blank canvas and Labour leader Keir Starmer and his team have indicated that the EU will be a foreign policy priority.
In the context of the Russian threat to Nato, at the annual Munich Security Conference in February, Labour’s foreign affairs spokesperson David Lammy promised to work on a foreign and defence policy pact with the EU.
"Russia will continue to be a threat to Europe for months, years, perhaps a generation more. We now need a UK-EU security pact," he said.
The details on what this might look like are sketchy, but Labour officials have indicated that they have in mind a more structured UK/EU relationship than exists under the current Trade and Cooperation Agreement with the EU, with regular meetings and official-level contacts and a broad definition of security that could also cover other policy areas such as energy and critical raw materials.
Aside from Russia, UK officials are aware that their security partnership with the EU will become an intensified priority if Trump wins a second stint in the White House at November’s presidential elections.
Andrew Duff, a former Liberal Democrat MEP and one of the UK’s experts on EU relations, reckons that a Labour government should pursue a treaty of political cooperation in security and defence.
Such a treaty will need to cover armaments’ procurement, industrial participation in the European Defence Agency, financial contributions to the European Defence Fund, and command and control arrangements for joint UK-EU military operations, says Duff, adding that to help Ukraine, the UK should also sign up to the EU’s European Peace Facility.
The UK’s post-Brexit status means that it cannot formally join EU defence efforts, but if the Sunak or future Labour governments are serious about European defence co-operation it will have to invest in making them work.