LIVING WITH THE NEIGHBOURS. THE UK AND EUROPE AFTER BREXIT - Panel 2

Abstract

This panel, and the project on which it draws, examines the recasting of UK relations with its European neighbours in the wake of its departure from the EU. Contesting existing interpretations from foreign policy analysis or de/re-Europeanisation, it takes the view that the UK’s post-Brexit bilateral relationships are conditioned both by the treaty obligations of its partners to the European Union, whether as member states, EEA affiliates, or neighbours such as Switzerland, and by the EU’s relationship with the UK. Inspired by the work of John Erik Fossum and his collaborators, which highlights how the UK-Norway bilateral relationship are constrained on the one hand by Norway’s treaty obligations to the EU as an EEA signatory and on the other by the two Agreements (Withdrawal Agreement and Trade and Cooperation) signed by the EU with the UK, the project conceptualises bilateral relations between the UK and European states as one side of a triangle that interacts with the other two. The aim of the project is to investigate how bilateral relations and the shape of the triangle vary both between countries with contrasting types of affiliation to the EU — EU member states, Norway, and Switzerland — and among EU member states with differing ties to the UK. This panel, which is the second of two proposed linked panels, includes five papers. The first by the convenors of the project, Cleo Davies, John Erik Fossum and Hussein Kassim, sets out the overall aim and purpose of the project, and introduces the triangle metaphor. The second uses the triangle metaphor to set out the EU’s position and its approach to the EU, examine how the EU’s interaction with the EU is governed by formal agreements, rules and institutions, as well as politics and the emergence of a solidarity norm, and details how the EU monitor and polices the bilateral interaction between EU states and the UK. The third explores UK bilaterals and bilateralism using the triangle metaphor. The fourth and fifth papers by Adonis Pegasiou and Brigid Laffan use the triangle metaphor to examine respectively Cyprus and Ireland’s bilateral interaction with the UK since the 2016 referendum, and examine the extent to which the relations of each of the two with the UK has been conditioned by the obligations of EU member states towards third countries in general and by EU-UK agreements in particular.

Title	Details
Perfidious Albion no more? Normalisation of France-UK relations post-Brexit	View Paper Details
Germany and the UK: ever closer bilateralism?	View Paper Details
Triangular Norway-UK-EU relations post-Brexit	View Paper Details
Trade, People, and the Rock: Spain–UK Relations in the Post-Brexit Era	View Paper Details
Conclusion: UK bilateralisms, dependencies and interdependencies in the post-Brexit era	View Paper Details