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Brexit has not yet happened. But just the prospect of Brexit has reduced the purchasing power of the pound by 10%.
The UK used to have the best of both worlds as far as the rest of Europe was concerned. It was sufficiently in the EU to exercise influence, but sufficiently out of it to maintain the sort of freedom of action that befitted its historic role.
The UK’s budget contribution had been modified through a rebate, and agricultural policy had been modified in a direction sought by the UK. That was the position that the UK held in the EU on 22 June 2016, the day before the referendum. The UK was having its European cake, and eating it at the same time. A year ago it decided to give that up.
Ireland’s position is very different from that of the UK. It has different priorities which explain why Ireland is determined to remain in a strengthened EU and is prepared to pay a price for that. In the dilemma created by this British action, nothing comes for free.
Like most of the smaller and medium-sized powers in Europe, Ireland does not have the military or economic strength to exercise the sort of freedom of action a bigger power, like the UK, France or Germany, can.
For a smaller country, the common rules guarantee it against unfair competition by an overweening bigger neighbour. They make the markets in which it competes predictable, open, and free of arbitrary behaviour. The common rules that the EU makes, and enforces, enable a country, like Ireland, to compete on equal terms for international investment. That would not be the case if bigger countries were unconstrained by the EU rule-based system. Investment would follow power.
The hard evidence of the benefit to Ireland of this aspect of EU membership is there to be seen.
Between 1950 and 1973, before it joined the common market, Ireland’s economic growth was 2 percentage points a year below the average of comparable European countries.
Economic growth
In the period after we joined in 1973, Ireland’s economic growth has been well above the European average, and remains so to this day.
Even in fields in which it might not be directly involved, like defence, Ireland has benefitted from the fact bigger countries cooperated, through entities such as NATO and the EU, to defend a peaceful, and secure, space in our vicinity.
As the Brexit talks develop, it is important to remind ourselves of the unique benefits of EU membership for a country.
In a world where even the biggest European country can be buffeted by forces originating in other countries, the EU gives every EU country a means of regulating those forces for the common good.
It provides its member states with a common system for making, amending, enforcing and interpreting common rules in the common interest.
The fact that the rules are now common to all, means that food can be sold, airline competition can be facilitated, patents respected, and savings protected, across the whole 28 countries of the EU.
The fact that these same rules can be amended democratically, in a single legislative process for all members, saves a lot of time. So does the fact that the rules will, if necessary, be enforced across Europe under the supervision of the European Commission.
Uniform
These rules will also be interpreted, in a uniform way across the whole of Europe, under the aegis of the European Court of Justice. This avoids all sorts of confusion, haggling, legal expense, and duplication.
Without the EU, the UK will find that none of this would be the case. The UK will lose the benefit of common EU standards, and the right to a vote of how those standards are made, amended, interpreted, and enforced, once it leaves.
But British voters did not seem to see this a year ago. Now that it is negotiating to leave the EU, the UK may, for the first time, get a sense of what it is losing.
As a non-member of the EU, to be able sell in Europe, the UK will now have to negotiate a new deal on each topic, then agree a separate procedure for amending, enforcing and interpreting that deal.
An initial trade and services agreement between the UK and the EU may, hopefully, be concluded sometime in the next five years.
The bigger problem will come afterwards. That will be when the UK and the EU have to update, interpret, and enforce the initial agreement. The opportunities for gamesmanship by commercial and political interests, for opportunistic blocking minorities, and for sheer bloody-mindedness are easy to imagine.
Everything will be up for grabs each time. Bureaucracies will have never-ending occasions to justify their separate existence.
A British initiative
But that is the path the UK has chosen. And it is important to remind ourselves that Brexit is a British initiative, and Britain has the primary responsibility for how it turns out.
They knew the rules before they started the process; indeed, they had a big part in writing those rules.
But one can still expect British negotiators to try to blame the EU side for sticking to these same rules.
It is also important to remember what the EU is. It is a rules-based institution.
It is attractive for smaller countries, such as Ireland, precisely because it is a rules-based institution rather than one based on raw power.
Ireland has experience in the past of being in a union where relative power rather than rules decided what happened. The bigger country in the Union could call the shots. There was no written constitution, no superior court, to which the weaker party, like Ireland or Scotland, could appeal.
The Brexit negotiation will be an educational process for all of us, but particularly for the UK
One often only learns the full benefit of existing arrangements, when one tries to break them.
Ireland should press to have maximum publicity for all aspects of the Brexit negotiation, to give voters everywhere the fullest possible insight into what is at stake.
As the negotiation proceeds, Ireland should seek to persuade the UK to change its mind about leaving the EU at all.
If that fails, it should try to persuade the UK to stay inside the EU Single Market, or inside the Customs Union.
But Ireland’s overriding interest, as the Brexit negotiation proceeds, will be to ensure that the EU stays together.
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