Brexit: beginnings of a detente between the EU and the UK

The Windsor Framework, the scheme made official by Ursula von der Leyen and Rishi Sunak on February 27, is seen by most observers as a step forward in the trade controversy over of the Protocol on Northern Ireland, the hottest point of contention between the EU and the UK since Great Britain's exit from the Union. At the heart of the Windsor Framework, which reinterprets (but not formally modifies) the Protocol on Northern Ireland, there are new rules for the transit of goods: "A 'green' corridor is established, free of customs controls, for goods arriving from Great Britain and consumed within Northern Ireland, while a 'red' corridor is instituted for goods which are instead transiting through Northern Ireland to reach the Republic of Ireland, i.e. the European Union" , explains Gianmarco Ottaviano, Achille and Giulia Boroli Chair in European Studies at Bocconi. "The goods of the red corridor will undergo customs controls, as happened before for all goods without distinction, to evaluate their conformity to EU standards and decide on the possible levying of duties based on the country in which they were originally produced. The goods of the green corridor will conversely be able to enter freely". From this point of view, the Windsor Framework, "despite being a marginal revision of the Treaty after all, is a very important agreement for the citizens of Northern Ireland, who will be able to receive goods afrom Great Britain more easily and at lower prices for their everyday needs. Something that shouldn't be underestimated." But above all, "it is a signal that the UK and the EU are starting to talk to each other again".

Customs issues
To understand why the Irish question is so important and why the Northern Ireland Protocol has represented the most complex aspect of the Withdrawal Agreement with which Brexit was given legal recognition, we need to take a step back to 1998. That year, the Good Friday Agreement brought peace between Catholics and Unionists in Northern Ireland, stipulating, among other things, that there should be no physical borders between the two parts of Ireland. At the time of Brexit, therefore, to avoid the risk that a new customs barrier could reignite the conflict with between the two parts of Ireland, the Protocol established a special regime for Northern Ireland: the EU would delegated to Great Britain the control of goods entering the Republic of Ireland (therefore the EU) and controls would be done directly in Ulster ports. "In fact, the latter, despite being part of Great Britain, therefore outside the European Union and the Single Market, has found itself in a sort of limbo where national British rules and European rules coexist, the latter aimed at maintaining alignment with EU product standards", explains Paola Mariani, Bocconi Professor of International and European law. The issue is that the European Union cannot give way on the subject of administrative controls, "because it cannot risk that the United Kingdom, no longer part of the Single Market, becomes a bridgehead for goods from third countries to enter Europe without duties and be freely exchanged without controls as part of eventual free trade agreements signed by London with them", continues Ottaviano, "but this was seen by Great Britain as a violation of its national integrity".

Sunday bloody Sunday
The complexity of EU-UK trade issues therefore has its roots in history. "Under the 1998 Peace Accords, government in Belfast is to be shared between Sinn Fein (Catholics) and the Unionists (Protestants). However, the latter have a very tough position on the Protocol and since last May they have refused to join the government coalition, thus creating a political deadlock", explains Justin Frosini, Director of the Bocconi Bachelor in Global Law. The fear for a return of the Troubles of the Seventies and Eighties still hovers strongly and doesn't take much to reignite the fuse of civil strife. "Now, everything depends on the position that the DUP, the largest Northern Irish unionist party, decides to take. It is clear that if they were to give a negative opinion on the Windsor Framework, the deadlock would remain". Furthermore, it is not only the Unionists who could scupper the deal: "There are also the 'hard Brexiters' of Boris Johnson, who has already expressed doubts about the agreement".
According to Frosini, in the end the Windsor Framework will pass the hurdle of the vote at the British House of Parliament: "The numbers are there because there are majorities in both the Conservative Party and the Labour Party that have expressed themselves in favor of approval. However, regardless of the numbers at Westminster, if there is strong opposition from the Tories' euroskeptic minority and the DUP stands firm in refusing to form a Sinn Fein-led government in Belfast, the problem will remain".

Brexit or Bregret?
Meanwhile, political sentiment seems to have changed in England since the Johnson era. Compared to 2016, when the referendum gave Brexiters 52% of the votes vs 48% of Brits who had supported Remain, there is more Bregret than lingering enthusiasm for Brexit. In November 2022, a YouGov poll reported that the percentages had more than reversed (32% vs 56%), while in January 2023, exactly three years after the country's exit from the European Union, an UnHerd opinion poll conducted on the UK's 650 electoral constituencies, revealed that in 647 of them voters thought Brexit had been a mistake. "The polls must be considered with a pinch of salt, and it's unwarranted to say that that were a new referendum held today, Remain would certainly win, but the results of the opinion poll on the orientation of voters in individual constituencies have definitely struck a chord with public opinion", considers Justin Frosini.

Blows to the economy
Opinion polls or not, there is the hard evidence of the data. With respect to the trajectory of investments in the pre-Brexit phase, for example, the Bank of England estimates a GDP drop of 2.8% for 2026, which climbs to 3.2% if we consider the level of trade, "which is basically in line with pre-Brexit estimates", underscores Gianmarco Ottaviano. For its part, the Office for Budget Responsibility, the British government's independent economic forecasting body, said that long-term GDP will be 4% lower than it would have been had the UK stayed within the EU. The adverse effects are much worse for British higher education: enrollments of young Europeans in Anglo-Saxon universities more than halved from 66,680 to 31,400 in 2021-2022, while it was only a few days ago that Oxford and Cambridge colleges sounded the alarm about EU funds: together they were raising £130 million a year in European grants: today only two of them manage to get £2 million as part of EU's Horizon program. In this respect, the new Windsor Framework has rekindled hopes for greater access to funding programs by Great Britain, after the aut-aut that the European Research Council gave to 150 researchers based in the UK in April 2022: either move to Europe or lose your grants.

In or out?
However, a whiff of Bregret is not enough to alter things. And even if it were to become the prevailing wind, the British ship would still have to navigate rough waters: "Technically, according to Article 50 of the EU Treaty on there are no legal impediments for the return of a state that has previously decided to leave the European Union", explains Paola Mariani. "There is, on the other hand, a more substantial problem: it would be a matter of returning under conditions very different from those enjoyed the past". Great Britain left the Union as a privileged country, "since its EU membership provided for several exceptions to its advantage (one for all, being able to keep its own national currency). If the UK were to retrace its steps now, it would be readmitted on the standard terms that apply to any other country and that would be a blow to British national pride."

The most probable path over time, therefore, "it is going to be a progressive redefinition of the Brexit agreements, rather than a return to the Union". In this sense, the Windsor Framework "represents the recovery of a fiduciary relationship between the two parties and the initiation of more advanced form of cooperations, while not being a real modification of the Protocol on Northern Ireland". This should be clarified, continues Paola Mariani: "To arrive at the Windsor Framework, revision mechanisms envisaged by the Withdrawal Agreement were used, which allow for revising the terms without having to modify the text of the treaty which would require the formal approval of contracting parties". However, although the system remains the same, with all that it entails regarding possible future developments at the political level, "with these additional commitments established by the framework, the trading system between the United Kingdom and the European Union becomes more transparent, since, for instance, the EU will have real-time access to the British data system which oversees customs controls".

In short, the Windsor Framework has not untied the Gordian knot caused by Brexit but has at least loosened it.