Panorama 28.03.2025

Euranet Plus Panorama is a weekly news review that showcases our network’s wide-ranging coverage of EU-related stories.

Radio România Internațional, 31.03.2025, 16:39

Love thy neighbour: is the UK returning to the fold?

A certain EU-UK ‘rapprochement’ seems to be underway, with Donald Trump installed across the pond and Europeans increasingly aware of their own (in)security.
Somewhat ironically, the electronic travel authorisation, or ETA, the UK’s much-anticipated new entry system that will complicate EU citizens’ travel, is due to go live next Wednesday (2 April).

Enter the ETA

Simon Usherwood is a professor of politics and international studies at the UK’s Open University and an expert on EU-UK relations linked to the London-based think tank ‘UK in a Changing Europe’. Radio 24 asks him about the significance of this new layer of border administration in our post-Brexit world. Usherwood is not keen to overplay it.

Simon Usherwood, Senior Fellow at UK in a Changing Europe (in English):
“I think you might see some limited impact, but already, if you’re thinking about exchanges, tourism, I think what impact you’ve seen has already taken place. If you think about English language courses, which used to be a very important thing, that has already shrunk massively because of the paperwork that already exists. […] So I don’t think it’s a game changer, but I think it’s a marker of the continued divergence that takes place between the UK and the EU over time, almost mechanically. Neither the UK nor the EU stay the same, or have stayed the same since 2020.”

In turn, our German partner station AMS seeks the views of Birgit Schmeitzner, a press spokesperson at the European Commission.
Schmeitzner is quick to defend the EU’s own border management system, which is not likely to launch until next year, claiming it will make border checks more efficient and identity fraud more difficult. And, despite these seemingly tit-for-tat border controls, which will affect those travelling in either direction across the English Channel, she insists that relations between Brussels and London are in fact warming right up.

Birgit Schmeitzner, Press Officer at the European Commission (in German):
“There are contacts at many levels. Preparations are also underway for a joint summit in May. This will be the first meeting at this level of leadership since Brexit. And we can already say that it will be an important milestone in our relationship. Everything will of course be based on the withdrawal agreement that we have in place. [The EU-UK relationship] is also a recurring topic in other forums, for example in Council meetings. And recently, of course, the British prime minister visited the Commission president. Both emphasised afterwards that good strategic cooperation is very important to them. This applies most immediately to the focus on Ukraine and, of course, European security as a whole. But it goes further than this. There are other issues, such as trade. It’s about exploiting untapped potential on a small scale – through, for example, individual contacts between people in the EU and people in the UK. And also on a large scale – for example in fighting global warming and its consequences. This issue doesn’t stop at borders. Nor do energy prices or our democratic values.”

Self-defence

Yes, it’s clear, of course, that the most immediate area of mutual interest is that of defence and security. But not everyone in Europe is pleased about the seemingly leading role London is attempting to take here.

José Pinto Ramalho, the former chief of staff of Portugal’s army, for one. He shares his frustration with Rádio Renascença.

José Pinto Ramalho, Former Chief of Staff of Portugal’s Army (in Portuguese):
“It’s the European Council that deals with foreign policy and the positions taken by the various countries, and the European Council has a president. […] I’m shocked that France and the United Kingdom, which isn’t even part of the EU at the moment, are speaking for Europe. They aren’t the most important countries in Europe either. What kind of Europe is this?”
Ana Catarina Mendes is the permanent rapporteur on the EU-UK Trade and Cooperation Agreement in the European Parliament’s civil liberties, justice and home affairs committee. She is enthusiastic about the recent thaw in EU-UK relations.

In a separate interview with Renascença this week, the Portuguese socialist MEP expresses her belief that all of Trump’s recent posturing will ultimately bear fruit here in Europe. “Trump has once again made us speak with one voice,” she says. And she goes on…

Ana Catarina Mendes, Member of the European Parliament – S&D, Portugal (in Portuguese):
“I have noted with great sympathy and great care what the British prime minister has said about the need for all of us in Europe to respond as one to the defence issues. I think this relationship was never really lost, but the fact that this prime minister is prioritising it, and strengthening the United Kingdom’s relations with the European Union, could be a first step towards the outcome I want, which is for the UK to be able to rejoin the EU.”

Is ‘Brenter’ on the table?

Rejoin the EU? Well, although it’s good news that London is now once again on speaking terms with its European neighbours, that feels like a bit of a leap, doesn’t it?
Perhaps not, says Ramūnas Vilpišauskas, a professor at Vilnius University’s Institute of International Relations and Political Science, to our colleagues at Žinių Radijas. Vilpišauskas paints a fairly bleak picture of the UK economy post-Brexit and acknowledges that there are mutterings in certain circles of turning back the clock.

Ramūnas Vilpišauskas, Political Scientist (in Lithuanian):
“Withdrawal not only from the EU institutions, but from the single market in general, from the common external trade policy, while negotiating only a rather unambitious free trade agreement – even less ambitious than the EU’s treaty with Canada – has led to the introduction of rather significant disruptions in mutual economic exchanges. As a result, there is a certain level of debate in the UK about whether their decision was a mistake. We also see public opinion polls in which the proportion of those who would support a return to the EU has increased in recent years.”
All of this said, he does not actually consider ‘Brenter’ (as some people are calling it!) a realistic prospect.

Ramūnas Vilpišauskas, Political Scientist (in Lithuanian):
“Both the Conservatives and the current Labour government are very reluctant to talk about any closer relationship between the UK and the EU. Even individual sectoral agreements, say on student exchanges, youth exchanges, research funding or the like, are proving quite difficult to get through.”

Similarly, Estonia’s ambassador in London, Viljar Lubi, is under no illusions that the UK will be returning to the EU fold – at least not in any official capacity – as he tells Kuku Raadio.

Viljar Lubi, Estonia’s Ambassador to the United Kingdom (in Estonian):
„Brexit will certainly not be renegotiated, the governing Labour Party has said that quite firmly. There will be no reunification with the EU. They have also said that there will be no reintegration into the single market. But what they have said is that there will be a rapprochement. […] The field of defence is definitely where cooperation will take place. Here, British involvement is in the interests of both Estonia and the EU. And vice versa.”

So there you go. While there may be no imminent unpicking of Brexit on the cards, perhaps the silver lining of hostility and uncertainty in other quarters is a little more love between immediate neighbours.