Is Brexit a gamer changer for EU external differentiated integration?
Résumé
First lines: The future EU-UK relationship cannot be negotiated in abstracto as a purist form of ‘taking back control’, as imagined by Prime Minister Boris Johnson. The UK is the first country to leave the EU, but the last of a long list of close neighbours and remote countries which have asked for preferential access to the Union’s Single Market. Any post-Brexit agreement will have to fit into an already complex framework of external differentiated integration. Over the years, the EU has accepted very diverse modes of such integration. Every agreement corresponds to a specific moment of the EU project, a specific partner and specific objectives, and is implemented through a specific institutional set-up.