The UK and EU Foreign, Security and Defence Policy Relationship During the Brexit Interregnum: (Re)integration, Autonomy or Atrophy?

The Brexit process represents a significant recalibration of the international relations of Europe, the UK, and of the foreign, security and defence policies of the EU and its member states. Across the three year duration of this interregnum the UK’s position as an EU member state insider with an ongoing role in EU decision-making has been concurrent with negotiating the terms of its withdrawal and anticipating the role of the UK becoming an EU outsider. This duality has created a distinctive hybrid form of interrelationship with the EU. This paper asserts that this could be classified as a form of ‘hyper-associated’ membership status that has allowed for participation within EU decision-making institutions while accepting constraints on the role to be played in EU policy-making. Asserting the proposition of a hybrid associated membership status is that UK that has developed a interrelationship with the EU that is diminished from that of its pre-June 2016 position as a member state but that still surpasses that of country having a status of closely associated non-membership of the EU. The grounds for the assertion of this new hybrid status is that during the three year period since the June 2016 referendum new patterns of interaction have developed between the UK and the EU27. These three years have been a period of sufficient duration to allow for distinctive characteristics to emerge in the UK’s behaviour within the EU. This paper uses the practices that have emerged in the decision-making and implementation of the EU’s foreign, security and defence policy to explore this new hybrid status. The rationale for the selection of these areas is two-fold: first, it is an area in which the UK has significant capabilities and has been generally seen as having sought to play a leading role in policy development; second, foreign, security and defence policy are areas where the legal basis of member state cooperation and a predominance of externally driven determinants of policy might allow for creativity in the accommodating a member state with an uncertain legitimacy status in policy-making.