One Europe: why Britain belongs, and how to get there
To secure its future, the European Union must expand its membership and, at the same time, deepen its own defence. The immediate priority is to help Ukraine out of its dire predicament. The return of enlargement, stalled for many years, poses challenges for other European states on the periphery of the Union. Nowhere is the challenge more acute than in the United Kingdom.
The early policy of the current UK Labour government was to “make Brexit work”. This has now been ditched. What will replace it? In this discussion paper we look at the EU’s formal accession process, step by step, and discuss how a bid for full membership might be handled. We suggest a need for both sides to lay the groundwork through confidence-building measures. There is ample scope for practical collaboration on security and defence, capital markets integration and economic reform to boost Europe’s productivity, as well as migration and asylum. The UK should demonstrate that, if it regains its status as a full member state it would no longer obstruct constitutional reform of the Union. Both sides should aim to settle the question of Britain’s place in Europe for good.
Read the full Discussion Paper here.
Andrew Duff is an Academic Fellow of the European Policy Centre. He is a former Member of the European Parliament (1999-2014), a Vice-President of the Liberal Democrats, Director of the Federal Trust, and President of the Union of European Federalists (UEF). He tweets @AndrewDuffEU and @andrewduffeu.bsky.social
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