By André Sapir, a Senior Fellow at Bruegel. He is also University Professor at the Université Libre de Bruxelles (ULB) and Research Fellow of the London-based Centre for Economic Policy Research. Originally published at Bruegel.
The Trade and Cooperation Agreement signed between the European Union and the United Kingdom goes against six decades of UK efforts to avoid being economically disadvantaged in Europe. Tracking the evolution of the EU-UK relationship over the last 60 years can help in understanding this.
To appreciate fully the significance of this new chapter in the EU-UK trade relationship – and the ironies it brings with it – it is useful to examine how that relationship has evolved over the past 60-plus years. The UK is now outside structures it helped create and that, indeed, were fundamental to UK efforts over six decades to avoid being economically disadvantaged in Europe. It should be noted that what follows focuses solely on trade, which is the core of the TCA. This article does not delve into areas such as monetary integration or the EU budget, which were important when the UK belonged to the EU, but are marginal for the TCA.