“The EU had only one shot to prove the value of membership, and that's exactly what it did”, explains Professor Brigid Laffan. “The most important lesson of this book is that the EU has an enormous untapped capacity to deal with major challenges, as it proved in the Brexit process. When the EU remains united and determined, it can tap into an extraordinary collective power, in its own interests.”
There is a trove of literature on why the United Kingdom left the European Union but Laffan and Telle’s unique analysis delves into the unprecedented exit of one of its members from the EU's perspective and examines the Union’s capacity to respond to this major shock. The authors stress the importance for the EU to prioritise the Union over its relations with the UK. They argue that addressing "certain divorce issues" such as citizenship rights, financial settlement, and the Irish border before discussing the future was a good gamble on the part of the EU.
In this Schuman Shelf, Brigid Laffan and Stefan Telle explain how Brexit demonstrated the EU’s enormous untapped capacity to deal with major challenges.
The authors presented their book at the Robert Schuman Centre at the European University Institute on 7 June 2023 and discussed why it was crucial for the EU to lead the Brexit negotiation process.
"The EU, as it went into the negotiations with the UK, had created three resources that would be important for the EU in the negotiations”, Telle explains. “It had consistent objectives, it had broad political ownership of those objectives, and technical preparedness to shape the negotiation process."
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