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In my day job I'm negotiating an agreement between the EU and another country. With my Brexit Twitter hat on, let me share some details on the steps involved in getting to that agreement, and why it's unwise (read mad) to expect it to be done quickly: 1/
First, before you even start negotiating, you need a mandate. That means preparing legislation to be adopted by the EU Council outlining the acceptable parameters of an agreement ('negotiating directives'). In my case, that took 6 months. 2/
Then you can start to negotiate. The fastest negotiation I've seen took just under a year from first round to initialling (i.e. negotiators put their initials to an agreed text). With Canada it took about 13 years. Mine will probably take about 2 years. 3/
Once you have an initialled text, it needs to go to 'legal scrubbing'. Teams of lawyer-linguists go over the text in detail to ensure consistency and to make it legally watertight. This can easily take a year. 4/
Once you have a legally scrubbed text, you have to go back to the negotiating partner to make sure they agree to any changes the lawyer-linguists have made to the text. They also need to adapt their language version. 5/
Once both sides have a final, legally scrubbed text, it needs to go to translation on the EU side to be available in all EU official languages. Add another couple of months. Then the lawyer-linguists need to check the translations. 6/
OK, finally we have a legally scrubbed text in all languages ready to sign. We now have to prepare legislation to allow the signature to take place. Only once the Council Decision has been adopted can we have a signing ceremony. It's now over 4 years since we started. 7/
We sign the agreement! Hooray. But it's a mixed agreement, meaning that it covers some areas that are Member State competence. Each EU Member State has to ratify. That can take upward from 6 months to several years. In some MS regional assemblies must also ratify (eg Belgium). 8/
In parallel to Member State ratification we also need the European Parliament's consent. That means appointing a rapporteur, preparing and debating a report in Committee, then securing a positive vote in the Plenary. 9/
Only once you have Parliamentary consent and ratification of all Member States can you move to adoption. This involves (yes) another Council Decision which has to be drafted and then put through the legislative process. 10/
Finally, once the Council Decision on adoption is, er, adopted, the new Agreement will come into force (normally one month and one week after the Council Decision's adoption date). We've made it! And it only took ooh 5 or 6 years, of which only 2 were actual negotiations. 11/
Some of these steps can be compressed. If it's not a mixed agreement, but EU competence only, then you don't need Member State ratification, just Parliament's consent & a Council Decision on adoption. But it's hard to see an EU-UK one not being mixed. 12/
And of course political pressure can speed up some of the procedures, eg legal scrubbing and translation. If it's urgent and important, throw more resources at it, get it done faster. 18 months could be reduced to under 6, maybe. 13/
On the other hand, my agreement isn't particularly controversial or complex. An EU-UK agreement will be. Expect the preparation of the mandate to take longer, the negotiation of the agreement itself to take much longer, and then ratification by the member states... well. 14/
One way past this is to provisionally apply the agreement. This can happen after signature if all parties agree, including Member States. BUT: only to the EU competence parts of a mixed agreement; and it only shortens the ratification part. 15/
In brief, agreements with the EU take years, with the bulk of the time spent not on negotiations themselves but on necessary procedures to ensure democratic scrutiny and legal certainty. If we Brexit, it will take years before we stabilise the EU-UK relationship. 16/
If the withdrawal agreement is passed and we Brexit *with* a deal, we will have a 2 year transition period. I hope I've shown how, erm, optimistic that time frame is for moving to a new EU-UK agreement. Personally I think it's hopelessly unrealistic. 17/
But in a no deal scenario you are looking at YEARS of chaos before we can move back to a settled trading relationship with our biggest trading partner. It simply cannot be done in a hurry, even if the UK rolls over and does everything the EU asks without question. 18/
For the last 3 years the vast majority of British attention has been focused on Brexit day itself, and the withdrawal agreement. People are not paying attention to the far more important matter of a future relationship, and coping with the interim. 19/
The analogy that comes to my mind is a couple expecting their first baby, focusing entirely on the birth itself, unable to see the big picture that after the trauma and drama of childbirth come 18 years of total disruption to their previous lives. 20/20
(In case you're wondering, yes I just sat down with an expert colleague who explained all this to me over a coffee so I know what I have to do, and my head is hurting so I need to write it down. Might as well put it to good use!)
I should add that, had the UK government been looking ahead to its future relationship with the EU, it would have gone about the withdrawal phase completely differently. So many bridges have been burned, and will have to be built again from scratch. https://twitter.com/ottocrat/status/1182232139061960705?s=21
We know that Boris likes bridges but how many of his fantastical bridge projects has he actually seen built?
It’s interesting to see how responses fall into two camps. The majority: ohhh interesting, good to see the lengths the EU goes to for democratic scrutiny and legal correctness. A minority: ohhh interesting, good to see the lengths the EU goes to for PROTECTIONISM AND RED TAPE.
Two things to add to my thread. At the outset, once a political decision has been taken by the Commission to proceed with a new agreement, before the mandate is requested from the Council stakeholder consultation & impact assessment has to happen. Takes a while.
The other thing that does not get sufficient attention is that the UK wants a divergence agreement, not a convergence agreement. This is without precedent. Starting from a point of regulatory equivalence is irrelevant, it’s the destination that matters.
This hugely complicates several stages of the EU process: stakeholder consultation, impact assessment, securing the political mandate, THE NEGOTIATIONS, and ratification. I confidently predict it will take years. The EU has never negotiated something like this before.
When Johnson talks about a great deal on the future relationship by the end of 2020, he is lying.
