Angela Merkel, Theresa May and Emmanuel Macron

Politics

金钱如何扫清英国退欧谈判障碍

Oct 20, 2017 Anatole Kaletsky

伦敦—和许多离婚过程一样，英国与欧盟的谈判也陷入了只有通过妥协才能打破的僵局。解决办法是双方都承认无法在2019年3月英国退欧大限前的短暂的时间里形成永久性新关系。

因此，谈判不应该着眼于让英国在那时离开欧盟，而应该转向英国首相梅在上个月正式要求的临时性“过渡”，这也是如今英国商界领袖和公众形成强烈抑制并要求的。最重要的是，谈判者应该立即将重点放在有序过渡所要求的英国预算贡献上。

形成双赢过渡协定需要双方都做出一些妥协。但不论是英国还是欧盟，都不需要放弃任何根本性原则。

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0 Comments on this paragraph, 33 Comments on this article

Arthur Dent Nov 1, 2017

By focussing on the impact of Britain's missing contribution, Kaletsky rather misses the point. That's not what the EU is most concerned about. The hole in the EU budget left by Brexit will in any case amount to a fraction of one percent of the EU 27's government spending.

What matters are the principles involved, the precedents being set and what is thereby being implied about the nature of the EU project itself.

After a partner leaves a partnership, he remains liable for his share of the debts and obligations incurred while he was still a member of the firm. The money the EU is asking for is not a divorce fee or a bill for a future trade agreement. It is payment of what is owed as a result of British votes in Council committing the EU to various legally binding expenditures within the multi-annual financial framework.

What the EU wants is acknowledgement that these sums are owing, and to start with a specific mention by Mrs May or David Davis of the various headings under which the UK recognizes it has debts to pay.

Nor can any Norway option be offered that would grant Britain that sort of access without continued Freedom of Movement for labour as well as capital. To do so would run smack bang into the MFN clauses in the current treaties with Canada and South Korea.
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Lasse Laine Oct 29, 2017

Interesting paper where the focus is primarily economic. I wonder - as a philosopher - social scientist and alternative thinker with my proposal for a new paradigm of science- if the British people's Brexit decision was focused on this kind of issues only ? The ground for referendum might have been mostly the ongoing social- economic conditions there- as elsewhere in the world, as a result of the economic theories used by EU, together with the leadership culture of EU ? I have myself commented the EU Commission's 5 future scenarios in my latest e-book on my SME's Publishing House site, where I lift up the fact that my proposals- deduced from my new, more abstract paradigm- could have given another kind of ground for the EU- work.. Thus the "grounding question for Brexit": if they had known about another kind of ground for the EU- work /conditions/ evolution, hadn't they voted for Brexit ? Let's read again John Stuart Mill's book On Liberty, and remember why the open dialogue/ criticism is important..
Thanks for have the possibility to write here.
Lasse T Laine, Uppsala,Sweden
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Stephen Ching Oct 24, 2017

This narrative reads very plausibly, but the realpolitik is that a larger monetary settlement by the UK will make little difference to the ongoing relationship between the UK and the EU. The EU will push for the maximum money it can squeeze out of the UK and with that done then look solely to its own interests and treat the UK as an outsider and competitor.

When France left NATO it did not honour its existing commitments to the ongoing NATO budget at all. Who cares about that now?

After WWI, Britain stood as guarantor to the US for all the Allies' loans and the UK repaid the US despite the fact that most of those Allies did not subsequently honour their positions to the UK, yet who cares about that?

When the UK only finished repaying WWII loans to the US this century, who cares about that?

To think that if the UK is more generous in the settlement that the EU will be more generous after it is just delusional. History shows that the world and its politicians move on and pragmatism sweeps such gestures, regardless of whether honourable or shabby, under the carpet.

If the UK is leaving then their settlement should be the absolute legal minimum. All the politicians and bureaucrats handling this negotiation will be history in a few years and then what they think won't matter a damn.
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John Reid Oct 22, 2017

From where I sit Britain's main problem seems to be a matter of faith. There are three initial conditions to be met: talk about a net settlement, the status of EU27 migrants and the Irish border.

The Irish border discussions seem to be going no where, but the other two are foundering on British bad faith.

Bad faith? Yep. David Cameron in the pre referendum phase undertook to meet all of the UK's commitments. Theresa May has jibbed at that. And one the rights of EU citizens the current government has been issuing exclusion orders that are almost certainly unlawful now, never mind they're in clear breach of the red line in this area.

All of this suggests that for the British government a promise means nothing. Why would any sane organization continue talking to a government that behaves in this way, when a cool analysis suggests that if push comes to shove banking and much manufacturing will relocate anyway?

In the case of the UK crashing out the EU will come out far better than Britain; it's time the British realized that being tricky is entirely self-destructive.
- Steve Hurst Oct 23, 2017
  
  It is not legally clear what the 'obligations' are so it is difficult to claim those obligations have not been met. I can assure you the higher you go in legal process the muddier the water becomes, not the clearer.
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- John Reid Oct 23, 2017
  
  For "And one the rights of EU citizens" please read "And on the rights of EU citizens,"
  
  a typo that slipped through unnoticed...
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simon noble Oct 22, 2017

Thoughtful piece with slightly misleading headline. Really the theme is Form over Substance.
Anatole calls for simultaneous negotiations on all issues rather than solve finance first. But this surely has been May's line all along and the EU has refused to countenance it. Two possible reasons. First is ego: the EU is stringer, the UK started it, etc. The second is a fear that the EU simply isn't equipped for a long dynamic process which requires compromises and consultations along the way. Another factor may be that the EU is not very sophisticated. It sees this in a French way: there is a loser and a winner. What it cannot grasp is that Brexit will hurt both sides. The EU will suffer less but a chaotic exit will cause enough disruption to put the EU at risk in its still fragile recovery. The possibility that net effect of a bad Brexit may be a smaller pie for everybody is beyond the EU's powers of comprehension; it is too busy squabbling about the spoils of victory. Brexit is an act of self harm but the collateral damage could be significant.
- John Ellis Oct 22, 2017
  
  Er...all the squabbling seems to be going on in London and has been for months or don't you keep up with the news from London which has assumed humorous proportions at times?
  
  The EU by contrast spent about 4 months hammering out their position; got it agreed by all the 27 governments by the time the British invoked article 50 (itself 9 months after the referendum!); appointed a negotiator; gave him his brief; and has been totally consistent ever since. This despite the fact that the British initially agreed to the sequencing; then reneged on this agreement; then tried some clumsy and transparent divide and rule maneuvers to circumvent Barnier that failed completely. And all the while the cabinet back in London was obviously divided with leaks; ministers making contradictory speeches in the commons and outside; and briefing against each other in the popular press.
  
  It's hard to know how anyone formulates value judgments but on any objective assessment of the relative sophistication by which this process has been handled, the EU has been a Ferrari or Maybach while Britain has been a Morris Minor or Austin 7.
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John Ellis Oct 22, 2017

Why would the EU wish to move on to discuss "Transition" until the three areas of divorce terms are resolved? Firstly, it eliminates their trump card in the negotiations and secondly it gives the British the opportunity for which they have been clearly maneuvering to commingle the divorce terms with those of the trading relationship. This is negotiation 101. It's hard to see the EU falling for this ruse.

The bottom line is that May is going to have to take the political decision (and that's what it is) to get into detail on what the British are prepared to offer in the three areas and that means accepting a payment in the area of 50 billion sterling. This involves facing down the Brexit tendency in her own Conservative party and the vitriol from the right wing tabloid press in Britain. Whether she will do this remains to be seen but it's the only thing that likely to break the current stand off.
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Tim Morgan Oct 22, 2017

Anyone who really understands the parlous state of the British economy should realise that the UK simply cannot afford to pay the EU anything. Every sector is trending down, and each £1 of growth is accompanied by almost £6 of net new debt. Spending borrowed money isn't a sustainable practice, and neither is selling assets to bridge a yawning current account gap.

The one thing that the EU really doesn't need is an economic basket-case on its Channel coast. There is a pragmatic case for generosity and magnaminity by the EU. It is imperative that the EU grant the UK a preferential trade deal based on agreed tariffs.
- John Ellis Oct 22, 2017
  
  As the British Brexiters never cease to remind everyone they are the 5th largest economy in the world. Certainly the British economy has been harmed by the decision to quit the EU but they are hardly in the poor house. Leaving the EU is not going to turn the UK into an economic basket case but it's undoubtedly going to make it somewhat poorer. There are numerous estimates (MIT, Kings London, the EU, various banks) out there of how much poorer but the consensus is of a permanent hit of 5 to 10% of GDP or 100 to 200 billion sterling. Set against this the payment requested by the EU amortized over several years is pretty small potatoes as the CBI and others have pointed out. Incidentally, the British have been selling private and public assets and economic potential for decades to bridge their current account deficit. They don't need any help from the EU.
  - Steve Hurst Oct 22, 2017
    
    John, reasonable enough overview. However the casual figure of -5 to -10%, whist a valid figure, needs to be parked alongside the 2008 debacle induced -7% and the effects are still all around us. There is also the distance from market curve and our nearest market is, well the EU. I am sure the EU know all of this. Somehow I have my doubts the mob at Westminster will suddenly up things by the likely 7% needed. We have a clown bun fight all round, the clown car will enter the ring shortly. The upshot is the UK will likely end up poorer and the EU will end up poorer but that is clowns for you. Red nose anybody? What was the song - Clowns to the left of me, Jokers to the right.
    - John Ellis Oct 23, 2017
      
      Ah but there is a difference between the post crash -7% and any post Brexit 5 to 10%. After the crash the city and key elements of British manufacturing like autos, pharma and so forth were all still there. Post a hard Brexit, a sizeable slice of the city won't be, and I believe the auto industry which I know quite well has considerable exposure. Much of it is in Britain because it's a portal to Europe and it exports about 60 of its output (heavily weighted to the more price competitive sectors) to Europe. Autos is a volume business, Britain produces about 1.7 million units and the EU (excluding the UK) produces 18 million, more than ten times as many. JLR will probably be alright but the rest of them could be in real trouble. Ford skipped years ago but still exports about a third of its production to the UK and has a market share around 13%. The SMMT laid all this out in a research paper over a year ago. The government can bribe them (which is what that secret letter of comfort to Nissan is all about) but if they bribe Nissan they're going to bribe large slices of British manufacturing and they can't afford it. Thus the chances of recovery, even a shaky recovery like the post 2008 one, are considerably lessened if material slices of the British economy decamp to the continent.
      - Steve Hurst Oct 23, 2017
        
        Well I note your concerns and I share some of them. The Eu will have its problems too. Much of what is going on in the Eu is plain unsustainable
        
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    - Barry Rosenfeld Oct 22, 2017
      
      A forced repatriation of the many workers in the UK who originate from the poorer countries in the EU will be a terrible burden on these countries. A possible quid pro quo is to maintain current workers, or perhaps even admit a specified number of new ones subject to yet to be determined criteria, for the concomitant reduction of the divorce payment that would otherwise be the burden to the labour exporting countries.
      - Prashant Kotak Oct 24, 2017
        
        Barry,
        There is an entire debate to be had around the consequence for the home countries of migrants, completely unacknowledged by both the globalist right and the globalist left. Not to put too fine a point on it, those countries are potentially de-nuded of their best talent.
        Those with the gumption to actually get up and look for better are by definition hard-working and self-reliant, the very talent that those countries cannot afford to lose.
        The cost of a Polish Doctor who comes and works in the NHS would be evidenced by an even longer waiting list in a Hospital in Poznan or some-such that lost the Doctor.
        But of course that would never be reported in the PS articles, which would happily let the gentle implication float around the ether that of course there is no ageing demograpic in Eastern Europe, and they are more "stoical" and "hard-headed" over there in any case, and do old people in Eastern Europe actually need their Doctors as much as the UK needs their Doctors anyway, given that they don't live as long, being poorer? Note that said Doctor would have been educated and trained by a nation that is significantly poorer than the host country, and only a cynic would class the vast subsidies being poured into those countries by the EU as blood-money.
        
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      - Steve Hurst Oct 23, 2017
        
        Actually shipping their brightest, most motivated, most educated here is a recipe for disaster for them long term. They screw their demographic, skill base and enable depopulation, in particular rural depopulation. There are already major problems brewing in Southern Italy, Greece, Poland, Bulgaria just to name a few
        
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Andrew Cole Oct 22, 2017

Unusually for a PS Brexit article, I think you are genuine and mean well to all.
Whilst 5-6 years is too long a compromise 2-3 years on sequencing and contributions might be acceptable to mainstream Brexit supporters. The key problem is that the moment the EU is refusing to talk about mutual recognition of standards and allowing the UK to negotiate the same with 3rd parties post Brexit. This means the EU is treating the UK like N Korea or BeloRus and effectively threatening a barbaric Napoleonic style continental system blockade because of the impact on cross channel logistics. The EU also needs to drop the dumping of Eurozone debt guarantees on non eurozone members including the UK and above all stop the hijack of the EU by just 2 countries, mixing up their supremacism with a drive for a united Europe looks like fascism again from the UK nearly pro-free trade low regulation Brexit perspective.
Ken Clarke is on record as wanting to replace Westminster with a committee room in Brussels. So he is not a non partisan figure, such a person of stature does not exist and therein lies the rub.
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M M Oct 22, 2017

The Brexit discussions look like the "Moulin Rouge" in its HayDays....Brigitte to the rescue...
- M M Oct 22, 2017
  
  Excluding the pretty dancers, of course.....
  - Prashant Kotak Oct 22, 2017
    
    MM - now look what you've done, a hallucinogenic vision of the five Presidents, Juncker, Tusk, Dijsselbloem, Dragi and Schulz doing the can-can with high-kicks exposing none too clean knickers under frilly frocks is burning the back of my eyes - aaahhh!
    - Steve Hurst Oct 22, 2017
      
      Yup, life's a drag
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Jonathan Engel Oct 21, 2017

I read in the first sentence of this article: " Like many divorce proceedings, Britain’s negotiations with the European Union have reached an impasse that can be broken only by compromise."

I'm not sure what proportion of the readers of this article have been through a divorce, but presumably about half.

Those who have been there know that absent a pre-nup agreement, in a era where the "no fault divorce" rules have been generalised, the richer party pays the poorer party a minimum of 30% of their net worth, plus a similar percentage of their earnings for 10 years. Lets be "gentle" with the EU, the EU should pay the UK (as the poorer party) about 25% of community wealth (say Italy plus Belgium) plus about 25% of EU GDP for 10 years....

I can assure the Author that proposing that the poorer party pay the richer party anything whatever (here the equivalence of the future house for the EU 27) would have the Judge rolling his eyes....
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Steve Hurst Oct 20, 2017

If the Eu wants cash what is it offering for that cash. Simple as that. The Eu, note the little 'u 'appears to not know what it wants and to be duplicitous and unrealistic. Simple as that. And I write that as somebody who voted Remain in the hope some commonsense would develop in the Eu. Fat chance. There is yet another European catastrophe developing based on ego and internal mainland conflict. The old thing of - if you want to speak to the Eu, who do you call - shrug shoulders - is back.

'...turn this recognition into an impressive long-term financial offer to unblock the Brexit talks'. Why? You assume that unblocking can occur, there is no sign of this whatsoever. The Eu Central cannot deal with the V4 to name just one issue, also cannot softly suggest democracy not brutality is the answer in Spain yet tinkers outside the Eu, what is this a Kindergarten Lord of the Flies. The answer should be simple - You want cash - what are you offering. In particular you don't get anything in negotiation by giving it all away on the basis of trust. The Eu is aware there is a guillotine and is determined to exploit it, fine we have got the message. Here is some cash, what are you offering for it. Simple
- K. Bauer Oct 24, 2017
  
  Tell that your bank 2 years into the mortgage of your house...
  The UK committed to finance programs in the past and other people (on both sides of the channel) planned with that. It's a contract. Infrastructure programs can take years to plan and years to finish. If the UK doesn't stand up to its commitments than its basically forcing the EU countries to pay for these. Why should they?
  
  I wonder what would have happened if the UK just said "Ok we are out at the end of the current budget period." How long go these commitments? (Pensions to UK EU personnel excluded)
  - Steve Hurst Oct 28, 2017
    
    There is no basis for the UK to automatically pay for infrastructure in other countries when it is not part of the entity implementing them. It is a nonsense. That sort of funding comes under Foreign Aid. 'No taxation without representation' James Otis 1761. Concurrent with your proposal what do you suggest is done with all the EU assets the UK has contributed to which the EU ant to hang on to without compensation to the UK
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Henk Crop Oct 20, 2017

I think it is important for Britain as well as the EU that trade does not get hurt.
Negotiations should first be focussed on what kind of trade relationship could be maintained or developed between the EU and the UK.
It appears to me that the UK does not have much of an alternative to the EU market, at least for some time to come.
It would be better to take some time to work that out, rather than focus on the deadlines now set.
Based on such attainable deadlines arrangement could be made about UK contributions.
We have to assume that the UK will also honor its financial obligations. The EU is not very constructive in giving that now first priority.
Further, I think that the departure of the UK was not a complement to the EU commission, afteral it was their function to keep the countries together. They refused to find a solution to the influx of immigrants, while since then many EU members have closed their borders on immigrants.
Negotiations should therefore be taken out of the hands of the EU commission.
Also mrs. Merkels envoy in Brussels mr. Selmayer ought to be replaced.
He let us publicly know, about half a year ago, that he hated the British.
Such a bias cannot contibute to finding a proper EU - UK relation.
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