Unions in Crisis?: Assessing how the process of delivering Brexit has damaged relations between the European Union and the United Kingdom

The panel contribution explores the extent to which the UK’s decision to withdraw from the EU was both a reflection of crisis in the EU and itself presented a crisis for the EU. At the outset it places Brexit briefly within its domestic UK context before turning to consider how the EU responded to the UK public’s decision. It analyses how the EU managed the withdrawal process and the negotiation of a post-Brexit UK-EU relationship to contain any sense of crisis. It argues that the Brexit agenda pursued by the May and Johnson governments generated real tensions between London and Brussels from the start over issues such as the divorce bill, citizens right and Northern Ireland. Negotiations were prolonged. Trust between the EU and the UK was severely tested and is being tried again given the UK government’s desire to rewrite the Ireland/Northern Ireland Protocol. The alterations to the protocol by the EU in October 2021 do not go far enough for the UK government and it seems very likely that Johnson will invoke article 16 of the protocol, generating a new crisis in US/EU relations and potentially impacting negatively on UK/US relations. This paper considers the fall-out and what it means for both unions in 2022.