UK in a Changing Europe, Professor Richard G.Whitman, Dr Joelle Grogan, Jannike Wachowiak, Written Evidence (RUI0004)

 

Written evidence prepared by UK in a Changing Europe 

for the House of Lords European Affairs Committee on

Implications of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine for UK-EU relations

 

UK in a Changing Europe (UKICE) is a network of academics based at King’s College London. It is funded by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC), and its mission is to make the findings of social science research available and accessible to non-academic audiences. A selection of questions of the call for evidence have been answered, drawn from UKICE expertise on UK-EU relations.

This evidence is provided by Professor Richard G. Whitman (Senior Fellow, UKICE),Dr Joelle Grogan (Head of Research, UKICE), and Jannike Wachowiak (Researcher, UKICE). 

 

Summary

 

How would you assess the overall state of cooperation between the EU, UK and other partners in relation to Ukraine? Is there a need for cooperation between the EU and the UK to be increased further? If so, in what way?

  1. Against the background of a difficult Brexit process and relations improved by agreement over the Windsor Framework, the mood regarding the level of cooperation between the EU and UK in relation to Ukraine has been generally positive. 
  2. Four areas in particular can be highlighted as markers of a good working relationship:
  1. Generally, however, UK-EU bilateral fora are not the preferred point of cooperation and coordination on matters concerning Ukraine. Other formats which generally include other states, notably the US, are more relevant. For example, during the summit held in July 2023, security guarantees for Ukraine were announced by the leaders of the G7, formalising long term security arrangements for the country. The declaration also states that the EU and its member states “stand ready to contribute to this effort”. Similarly, the Ukraine Defense Contact Group (Ramstein Group), composed of 54 countries including the UK, all EU Member States, and with an EU representative, has served as the primary body to coordinate the provision of military equipment to Ukraine rather than an EU-UK bilateral arrangement.
  2. Where there has been bilateral cooperation between the UK and EU concerning Ukraine, this has been generally ad hoc, rather than through formalised or institutionalised bilateral structures for dialogue and coordination on matters concerning either foreign, security or defence policy. 
  3. No formalised agreement was established as part of the Brexit process, and there are minimal points of formal security cooperation provided for within the Trade and Cooperation Agreement. The points of success highlighted above reflect both the demands of necessity and areas of strong mutual interest achieved through informal dialogue and coordination. 
  4. The current ad hoc nature of cooperation and engagement related to Ukraine has evidenced an adaptive capacity in the willingness to effectively respond to crisis situations by both sides. Russia’s war on Ukraine stimulated a high-level political impetus for cooperation in the UK and the EU and catalysed a response from the respective foreign policy officials to increase the tempo of their interactions to deliver on shared objectives such as diplomatic support for Ukraine and defining and implementing sanctions. 
  5. Wider political issues can also hamper cooperation, for example the delay in concluding the UK’s involvement in the PESCO Military Mobility (MM) project. The lack of predictability of common security challenges and the lack of formalised fora for discussion, decision and action, can also have the potential to limit response to be reactive rather than proactive in addressing threats and risks.

 

What implications, if any, does the EU’s response to the Russian invasion of Ukraine have for the UK-EU relationship in foreign, defence and security policy?

  1. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine was the catalyst for a tectonic shift in the EU on matters of foreign and security policy. The EU and its Member States are taking initiatives that would not have been previously considered as feasible, including the provision of lethal aid. It has also focused significant attention and resources to external threats and risks to EU defence and security.
  2. For the UK, this has meant both the impetus for cooperation on matters of strong joint interest (e.g., sanctions), and a catalyst to revealing the strength of informal discussion and relations between the UK and EU counterparts. 
  3. It has not, however, necessarily led to a higher likelihood of any formalised relationship on foreign, defence or security policy between the UK and EU. There are strong indications that any formalisation of the relationship would have to be first driven at political level by the UK, and then be convincing to all EU Member States at a time when the UK relationship has fallen significantly in terms of priority for Member States.

 

What implications, if any, do developments in the EU’s defence policy and approach to resilience since the Russian invasion of Ukraine have for the UK?

  1. Russia’s war on Ukraine has had two significant effects on EU defence policy. First, to accelerate and deepen the trajectory of existing policy and, second, to stimulate innovation that has increased the scale and scope of EU defence policy. 
  2. A key driver of these changes has been the significant shift in the strategic culture of a significant number of EU member states and evidenced by: the major shift in the defence postures of Sweden and Finland, in seeking NATO accession; the decision of Denmark to end its opt out from EU defence cooperation; the direct transfer of military equipment to Ukraine by a very significant proportion of member states; and almost universal commitments to raise national defence expenditure, significantly in some instances (notably Germany and Poland). 
  3. The post-2016 EU initiatives in defence which routinised discussions on defence capabilities within an EU institutional context (and also to provide an enhanced role for the European Commission in defence) have been notably progressed as the EU member states political response to Russia’s actions since February 2022. 
  4. The primary consequence of this is to provide greater form and substance to what was a nascent defence industrial and procurement component as a strand of the EU defence policy portfolio. Two key manifestations of this are:
  1. The innovative use of the EPF and the creation of the ASAP represent a watershed in the collective approach to the use of EU decision-making arrangements in the provision of military support to a third country. Further, a collective approach towards the funding, procurement, and production of military equipment for supply to a third country is a significant departure from past EU practice. With the exception of Norway (a contributor to the EPF) third countries are not participants in this process. 
  2. The UK has played no direct or indirect role in the EU’s development of the European Defence Fund (EDF) and the ASAP initiative. This is not just the consequence of the absence of a formal EU-UK security dialogue arrangement, although the UK would have had a formalised arrangement to express a view on these initiatives with the EU. The EU, in the name of strategic autonomy, took a decision to exclude third countries from schemes such as EDF, driven by French arguments concerning the need for autonomy and to privilege the development of EU capacities. 
  3. The ongoing process of defining what kind of security and defence actor the EU wants to be was accelerated with the EU Strategic Compass adopted in March 2022 and Russia’s war against Ukraine. 
  4. However, beyond the responses outlined above (the EPF, ASAP and EU MAM) there have been more modest direct effects of Russia’s war in Ukraine. The EU’s PESCO projects are generally considered to have under-delivered, the Coordinated Annual Review on Defence (CARD) process has not contributed to raising the EU’s level of ambition in defence and security and the project to provide additional collective capabilities in short time frames, such as the EUFOR Crisis Response Operation Core (CROC), has not accelerated. 
  5. The innovation of an EU budget for funding defence capabilities and technologies, the EDF budget in operation since May 2021 (€1.2bn in the current annual work programme), has not been substantively scaled up. The total planned expenditure for the EDF across the 2021-2027 period is €7.953 billion is modest when set against broader collective defence expenditure of EU member states is modest. But when considered against (EU small state) defence expenditure is not insignificant. The EDF annual budget is currently larger than the defence budgets of 10 of the EU member states.
  6. More broadly Russia’s war on Ukraine, in addition to consolidating the objective of a ‘defence union’ for the EU’s leadership, significantly stimulated major policy development in key areas of resilience (most notably energy security with swift measures to reduce reliance on Russian hydrocarbons) and contributing to a broader policy realignment to address issues such as the Putin regimes weaponization of economic interdependence and reflected in the European Economic Security Strategy agreed by member states in June 2023.  

 

Is there a need for greater coordination and cooperation between the EU and the UK on defence policy? If so, what sorts of cooperation should be prioritised?

  1. Since the publication of the EU’s Global Strategy in 2016 and given the political priority given by member states to the EU’s first Strategic Compass in 2022, a raft of new EU defence initiatives such as Permanent Structured Cooperation (PESCO), Coordinated Annual Review on Defence (CARD), Capability Development Plan (CDP) and the European Defence Fund (EDF) have provided a framework for injecting more momentum into collective defence capabilities.  Russia’s war on Ukraine has given an impetus to some of these developments but also seen innovation in several areas overlined below. 
  2. As a third country the UK was not involved in the definition of the Strategic Compass or the subsequent policy developments that it has generated. Further, EU arrangements for the participation of non-member states are currently chronically underdeveloped and have resulted in modest levels of participation by third countries. Norway has the most developed set of arrangements for participation with the EU as a third country and these have been confined to European Defence Agency (EDA) programmes, a small number of PESCO projects and a third country contributor to the EPF. 
  3. In third country defence cooperation with the EU, signing a bilateral Administrative Arrangement (AA) with the European Defence Agency (EDA) has become the precondition for association with EU’s programmes for defence capabilities (including defence industrial) enhancement. 
  4. The UK is currently out of line with non-EU member state defence partners (Norway, Ukraine, and the U.S. Department of Defence) in not signing an AA with the EDA. And non-NATO members Serbia and Switzerland are also signatories. Signature of an AA is a prerequisite for participation in EDA projects and programmes but does not bind or compel a third signatory to join the Agency’s undertakings except by mutual agreement. Consequently, reaching an AA between the UK and the EDA has benefits for the UK in entering a consultative relationship that would facilitate dialogue with an increasingly important organisational component of EU defence policy. 
  5. The UK Government sought participation in the PESCO Military Mobility (MM) project in July 2022 through the Dutch government (the coordinator of the project). The UK also agreed on participation based on a ‘project specific administrative arrangement’ with the EU - the same arrangement provided for with Canada, Norway, and the U.S. However, this agreement is not yet in force as a lack of agreement between the UK and Spain appears to be holding up its conclusion. The UK government could look to participate in future PESCO projects, for example the Network of Logistic Hubs in Europe and Support to Operations (NetLogHubs) project. However, as the level of third country involvement in PESCO projects has been so low a more general coordinated arrangement of the EU’s partner third countries should be considered by the UK to enhance the prospects of greater utility in partnering with the EU for more tangible benefits to European security. 
  6. The UK already liaises with the EU on the conduct of their respective programmes for the training of the Ukrainian armed forces. The UK’s INTERFLEX multi-national training programme preceded the creation of the EU’s own military training programme EUMAM. A more structured arrangement for an EU-UK dialogue (conducted with the full participation of Ukraine) to plan and prepare for Ukraine’s medium- and long-term future training needs would present an upgrading of the current less-formalised direct liaison arrangements. 
  7. It would be in the UK’s interest to sign a Framework Participation Agreement (FPA) to allow for the UK to decide on a case-by-case basis when and where it may wish to work with the EU in its existing EU CSDP operations in third countries. Signing such an agreement would not prejudice the forms of cooperation with the EU on foreign, security and defence that the UK might seek in the future. It would bring the UK into line with the position of its other NATO partners who are not members of the EU. 

 

The communiqué issued following the NATO Heads of State and Government summit in July 2023 stated that for “the strategic partnership between NATO and the EU, non-EU Allies’ fullest involvement in EU defence efforts is essential” and looked forward to “mutual steps, representing tangible progress, in this area to support a strengthened strategic partnership”. As a non-EU Member of NATO what steps, if any, should the UK take to give effect to this?

  1. There is already an extensive EU-NATO work programme and the two organisations have established a deeper relationship especially in their respective responses to Russia’s war on Ukraine. 
  2. An ‘EU pillar’ of NATO is becoming a de facto proposition. The significant overlaps of EU and NATO memberships, and the diminishing group of EU countries that are not EU members, will also take on an extra complexion if Ukraine’s ambitions to accede to both organisations gains greater traction. The UK (and other non-EU European members of NATO) has a strong interest in the terms of an EU-NATO strategic partnership being more clearly defined and based on non-detriment to the non-EU members of the Alliance. 
  3. This is of especial importance if U.S. engagement with NATO takes a different direction from the current leadership within the Alliance provided by the Biden Administration. 
  4. The role of both the EU and NATO in encouraging capabilities development and defence industrial initiatives by their respective members does raise the possibility of competing and conflicting programmes. The dilemma for the UK is reconciling its long-standing interest in enhanced defence capabilities for European states as the basis for strengthening NATO with the prospective increasing role for the EU in securing the necessary defence industrial policy for their facilitation. The UK has a significant interest but not the direct means to influence these developments. 
  5. A further implication for the UK is that a greater raft of EU-based defence, and defence industrial initiatives, embed Britain’s European security and defence partner countries in arrangements that may increasingly impinge on the scope of their bilateral cooperation with non-EU partners. Further, increasing EU capacity in the defence sphere has consequential effects for the EU-NATO relationship and for the non-EU European members of NATO. This will be particularly relevant if a future US presidency decreases its level of commitment to current foreign policy objectives regarding European security, NATO, and an international rules-based order.

 

The UK-EU Trade and Cooperation Agreement does not cover external affairs. In light of developments since the Russian invasion of Ukraine, should the UK and the EU develop more structured arrangements for cooperation in these areas? If so, what form should these take?

 In your assessment, would the EU welcome developing its relations with the UK in this area? If so, on what terms?

  1. Whilst the Trade and Cooperation Agreement (TCA) does not include a comprehensive foreign and security chapter, it provides for dialogue in a limited number of areas. A commitment to implement these provisions fully and as soon as possible would maximise the TCA’s potential:
  1. In an increasingly volatile global environment, the UK and EU might want to go further than that. A more formalised security partnership could create more predictability and stability. Whilst the situation in Ukraine necessitated immediate cooperation, having a more structured approach could enable coordination on longer-term priorities that lack the same degree of urgency but where it is in both sides’ interest to have a joint strategic outlook and anticipate and iron out difficulties and differences in opinion (e.g., relations with China, a stable European neighbourhood, and economic security).
  2. In recent years, the EU has engaged ‘more coherently, consistently and comprehensively with [its] bilateral partners around the world’ and tried to ‘bolster tailored partnerships’ based on shared values and interests . In addition to existing partnerships with Canada and Japan, the EU established new security and defence dialogues with the US, Norway, and Iceland. These models have varying degrees of formalisation (some have terms of reference, some do not) and could be a useful starting point for discussion.
  3. In many ways it seems like an obvious choice for the EU to establish a structured dialogue with the UK which remains an important strategic partner. The Strategic Compass on Security and Defence notes that the EU is ‘open to a broad and ambitious security and defence engagement with the UK’. At the same time, trust in the UK remains low and following the fraught and often bitter Brexit negotiations, there is little appetite in engaging in new and potentially difficult negotiations when the full implementation of the Trade and Cooperation Agreement has not yet been achieved.
  4. There is still considerable Brexit baggage on both sides which could resurface in a formal negotiation. Moreover, long and difficult negotiations could negatively affect some of the informal channels of communication which have developed in the context of Ukraine.  Whilst there is a prevailing sense that more could be done, there also seems to be caution about rushing into a formal agreement. For the time being, the EU is focussed on implementing what is already agreed (the TCA and the Withdrawal Agreement). When it comes to new initiatives, the ball is largely seen as in the UK’s court.

 


Can the E3 format (UK, France and Germany), established during negotiations relating to Iran, be extended to cover wider policy coordination on foreign affairs and security? What impact does the UK’s status outside of the EU have on its ability to participate in forums of this sort? 

  1. Outside the Iran nuclear dialogue, the E3 has not been a format for trilateral cooperation that has taken on greater significance since Brexit. Neither France nor Germany appears to see this as a format that they wish to broaden or deepen their coordination on foreign affairs with the UK.
  2. The current French and German reticence for expanding the remit of the E3 has been largely the product of the challenging EU-UK relationship. There is also a concern in Berlin and Paris not to create a substitute arrangement for a set of arrangements for EU-UK foreign and security policy dialogue and cooperation.
  3. The Quad (France, Germany, UK, U.S) format and cooperation through the G7 have been an arrangement more substantively utilised since Russia’s war on Ukraine. These two formats have provided the UK with alternative venues for coordination and a greater basis for influence with its key foreign policy interlocutors.  
  4. The development of the G7 (and especially in the G7 plus format) has provided the UK with a substantive forum to pursue foreign policy and it has been an effective format for driving Western policy on Ukraine and especially in the areas of sanctions. Non-membership of the EU does not appear to have been detrimental to the UK in its role within the G7. 

 

Received 10 October 2023