SUMMARY
The UK has joined a long list of third countries asking for preferential access to the EU’s Single Market. Andreas Eisl and Elvire Fabry weigh up the UK’s limited options by studying the existing forms of external differentiated integration. Especially with an imminent global economic crisis provoked by the COVID-19 pandemic, the EU27’s priority is to safeguard its economic competitiveness by preserving the integrity of the Single Market and using the full leverage of its economic weight on third countries. Rather than facilitate differentiation in integration, Brexit might be a turning point in the EU upgrading its Single Market’s leverage, to the UK’s dismay.
This chapter is part of the publication Towards an ambitious, broad, deep and flexible EU-UK partnership?, which examines the political, economic, social and institutional implications of the UK’s departure from the EU in different policy fields, as well as its impact on UK politics and EU integration. The contributions in this book, all by leading experts on Brexit, draw from discussions held in the Brexit Think Tank Group, which was set up by the EPC in the aftermath of the 2016 referendum. Through this format, the EPC facilitated a continuing exchange between the European Commission’s Task Force for Relations with the United Kingdom and the policy community.
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