Description
How are the existing minilateral, formal and informal, structures (re)engaging the UK with the EU and its European partners? Asked otherwise, are all ties broken or are there some ties that will be maintained? In our paper, we emphasize that international cooperation has never only happened within formal international governmental organizations (IOs). Instead, it has always also been sustained by bilateral or minilateral formats that surround these IOs. The EU is no exception to this form of multilateral policy-making. Although the UK has left the EU, these arrangements and formats, such as the European Intervention Initiative or the Joint Expeditionary Force, persist. We argue that because the UK is one of the few military powers in Europe, these arrangements serve as a bridge through which the UK will continue to have access to EU decision-making and activities. Not only this, Brexit is a chance for the UK and the EU to (re-)assess their ambitions in this policy realm. We draw on interviews in the UK, France, Germany, the EU and NATO, as well as official speeches, position papers and first-hand accounts to disentangle the UK’s continued embeddedness in EU security and defense policy-making.
