Everyone I meet, wherever I am these days, asks me the same thing: “What are the Brits doing?” Even Brits ask me what we’re doing. And I wish I knew what we were doing, I really do. The trouble is that all we’ve received from the British government in the last year and a half has been overused slogans, half-baked threats and undercooked plans. Just one thing has been resoundingly clear from the government: Brexit means Brexit. [...]
As a third country, it has been confirmed by EU negotiator Michel Barnier that the UK will not be in the EU’s crime-fighting intelligence agency Europol or the EU’s satellite project Galileo. It’s not a matter of money – no amount of cash is going to allow Britain to continue being in Europol or Galileo. It’s about trust.
Nick Gutteridge, a journalist in Brussels, recently tweeted a comment from an unnamed EU official who summarised the third country conundrum perfectly. I will quote the entire thing because it is really quite brilliant: “There is not an issue of general distrust towards the UK. That’s not the issue, but the EU is a rules-based system. Why is that? It’s because 28 member states do not trust each other spontaneously; they trust each other because they work on the basis of agreed common rules with common enforcement, common supervision and under a European court that will make sure they all apply the same rules in the same manner. They trust each other because there are remedies available. If you don’t have these remedies, you’re a third country.”
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