Going it alone in Europe – a difficult feat

A key slogan for those driving the process of Brexit was the need to ‘take back control’. Much political capital was invested in ensuring as clean a break as possible. But rhetoric and reality do not necessarily align under conditions of complex interdependence. There is the prospect of an exit akin to a famous line in Eagles’ song ‘Hotel California’: you can check out, but you can never leave. If Norway’s experience is anything to go by, then sovereignty retention is a formal status that is gradually hollowed out by the imperative of dynamic homogeneity with the EU’s internal market. Affiliated non-members’ relations with the EU are often labeled under the term external differentiation, but Norway’s relationship is regulated by 100+ agreements with the EU and is better labeled external differentiated integration. This term signals a more complex relationship of reciprocity and dynamic homogeneity where Norwegian citizens and companies have internal market rights and obligations. The closest UK analogy is Northern Ireland which has a special arrangement with the EU and UK. In this paper we compare and contrast Norway and UK’s bilateral EU relations. We compare and contrast the two entities’ EU affiliations in internal market and security/ defense. Our working hypothesis is that these issue areas exhibit different EU affiliations/modes of access with Norway having assured access to the EU’s internal market and the UK does not, whereas in security and defense the UK has better more assured access to the EU and its members than does Norway. Given that securitization has taken on a strong cross-sectoral orientation it is interesting to explore these dynamics further.