Is Starmer wasting the EU's time?
Despite warm words and new vibes, the British prime minister comes to Brussels today empty-handed. He's running out of time to present ideas for how to tangibly improve EU-UK relations.
British Prime Minister Keir Starmer is coming to Brussels today, three months after taking office in a landslide victory which ousted the Conservative Party which had been in power for the previous 14 years. But while Starmer has sought to change the mood music by repeatedly saying he wants a rapprochement with the EU, he remains hamstrung by the red lines which he set during the election campaign: no customs union, no single market, no free movement and no alignment.
Today will be the first formal meeting between Starmer and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen to discuss the EU-UK post-Brexit relationship, which was hurriedly agreed at the last minute with the Trade and Cooperation Agreement (TCA) in December 2020. Starmer says he wants to amend and improve this agreement. But he continues to say he will not budge on his red lines, which are virtually identical to Boris Johnson’s. And this means there isn’t much that can be amended or improved.
On the EU side, there is growing impatience with the fact that the Starmer government has not yet spelled out exactly what it wants to happen in this so-called ‘reset’. “The UK needs to tell us what they want,” a senior EU diplomat told the FT last week. “The red lines remain. The UK wants to stay outside the single market and the customs union. The ball is in the UK’s court. What do they really want?”