The EU-UK summit should enable leaders to respond to the threatening global situation by putting past differences behind them. However, backward-looking dogma and unnecessary red lines may result in the summit under-achieving. EU and UK leaders will meet in London on May 19th for their first formal summit since Brexit. The atmosphere has certainly improved since the acrimonious period around Brexit. Britain’s Labour government came to power promising a reset in EU-UK relations. British ministers and senior officials meet their EU counterparts frequently, and find common ground on issues such as support for Ukraine. But instead of marking a decisive step forward, this could be a summit of modest outcomes and missed opportunities. The EU’s efforts to increase its defence capabilities and rebuild its defence industrial capacity will be hampered if the UK is excluded from them, while the UK risks painfully slow economic growth, at a time of trade war, if it fails to lower the barriers to trade with the EU.
Authors: Aslak Berg, Research fellow; Ian Bond, Deputy director; Charles Grant, Director, Centre for European Reform.
This article is available on the CER website.
