Introduction

1The formal Brexit date of 31 January 2020 marked the first ever departure of a member state from the European Union (EU), and with it a first significant step of disintegration in the EU. While the UK’s formal departure from the EU indeed happened at the beginning of 2020, most of the consequences of this policy choice will only gradually emerge after December 2020, the end of the so-called transition period. This is due to the fact that the UK had left the EU’s decision-making procedures but still remained bound by almost all EU legislation until then. While Brexit’s effects will be felt in almost all areas of EU decision-making, it is expected to also have a large-scale impact on the EU’s standing in the world, and its formal foreign policy, in particular (Biscop, 2016; Cladi and Locatelli, 2019; Nissen, 2017; Svendsen, 2019; Whitman, 2016; Martill and Sus, 2018).

2Contributing to such debates from a different angle, this article considers how Brexit-induced disintegration has played out in two particular EU policy areas, namely that of the Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP) and the Common Security and Defence Policy (CSDP). Rather than considering the effects of Brexit on these resulting from macro issues, such as the symbolic implications of Brexit, the EU’s reputational loss, or indeed the reduction of the EU’s theoretical military clout, it instead focuses on the day-to-day effects on the administration of these policies. This approach is somewhat similar to one which considers the (likely) impact of Brexit on one specific body of CSDP decision-making, the so-called Political and Security Committee (PSC) (Svendsen and Adler-Nissen, 2019), yet differs from it by focusing on structural aspects, rather than direct human interactions.

3Such a perspective is particularly interesting given that both CFSP and CSDP differ from the core of the EU’s policies revolving around its single market in their continued intergovernmental decision-making. This mode of decision-making means that many aspects of EU activity and administration in these areas ultimately rely on member states’ willingness to partake in them.

4The article thus argues that the practical effects of the UK’s formal disintegration in the realm of the CFSP and CSDP depend largely on the degree to which the country had earlier decided to partake and invest in them. Ultimately, the impact on decision-making for both policies are significantly smaller in areas where the UK had already practiced a form of informal differentiated disintegration ahead of Brexit. For the purposes of this article, the latter concept is defined as a member state's voluntary abstention from EU activity where this is possible under intergovernmental decision-making. To this one has to add the separate collateral damage caused on the relevant CFSP and CSDP structures due to UK nationals no longer retaining the ability to act as EU civil servants.

5The analysis in this article is aided by considering the overall Brexit process as an instance of differentiated disintegration, defined as the “selective reduction of a state’s level and scope of integration” (Schimmelfennig, 2018, 1154). This novel field of enquiry is the logical counterpart to research agendas focusing on the increasing differentiation of EU integration, i.e. the heterogeneity of the application of EU policy areas across EU members, as well as the selective participation of non-EU members in EU policies. When it comes to Brexit, it has been argued that this phenomenon should ultimately be studied as “a ground-breaking case of differentiated disintegration” (emphasis in the original, Leruth, Gänzle, and Trondal, 2019, 3) allowing for novel kinds of research questions and approaches. The article aims to contribute to this emerging literature by highlighting the distinction between Brexit as a formal disintegration process and its different effects across policy areas given the degree of prior informal differentiated (dis)integration. Here, its focus on the day-to-day administration of both policy areas is particularly relevant, as “differentiated disintegration can also be seen as an administrative phenomenon” (Leruth, Gänzle, and Trondal, 2019, 10). The focus of the analysis is on crucial aspects required in successful policy-making and public administration, namely human resources, information and expertise, as well as overall resources available for the conduct of a policy.

6While the UK’s voluntary absence from parts of the EU’s CFSP and CSDP activities has been hinted at in research analysing the effect of Brexit on these policy areas (Hadfield, 2018, 179; Heisbourg, 2016, 13; Tonra and Whitman, 2017, 49), and an important difference between the UK’s overall foreign and security policy clout and actual participation in EU CSDP activities has been outlined (Duke, 2019, 14–17), this article’s focus on specific administrative aspects of EU CFSP and CSDP activity adds to the picture that has begun to emerge.

7In the following, the article explores the concept of informal differentiated (dis)integration and its administrative aspects. It then moves on to discuss how the UK’s choices on participation in both CFSP and CSDP prior to Brexit affect the course of administrative disintegration observed here. Empirically, the analysis is based on existing research, official documents and supplemental research interviews with EU officials and member state representatives working within CFSP and CSDP structures.

Informal disintegration, EU administration and the Brexit process

8Discussions of differentiated integration and more recently differentiated disintegration have largely focused on formal aspects of differentiation, such as participation in specific EU policy areas. In the case of Brexit, the discussion then very much revolves around the formal process of the UK’s withdrawal from the EU and its effects on concepts of differentiated (dis)integration (Leruth, Gänzle, and Trondal, 2019; Schimmelfennig, 2018; Markakis, 2020; Gänzle, Leruth, and Trondal, 2020). This has also been the case for the EU’s CFSP and CSDP, with scholars debating how the country could be and may want to be associated with these EU policy areas after Brexit (Martill and Sus, 2018; Whitman, 2016), as well as how differentiated integration in this policy field may evolve as a result of Brexit (Cladi and Locatelli, 2019; Mesquita, 2019; Zyla, 2020).

9However, a consideration of informal varieties of disintegration which can be observed in intergovernmental parts of EU activity, such as its CFSP, can help understand the uneven effects of Brexit on this policy area. While it has been observed that differentiation in the CFSP has often happened outside of the EU’s formal treaty settings (Koenig, 2015, 9), this can also occur within. Here, it is important to note that unlike for fully integrated EU policy-areas which include supranational decision-making, the intergovernmental nature of policy areas such as the CFSP allows member states to formally partake in the policy, yet remain largely absent from it in practice. In turn, while Brexit marks the UK’s formal departure from all EU policies and participation in EU decision-making, the impact of disintegration can thus vary widely between the policy areas in question, and sometimes even between parts of the same policy area.

10In the domain of the CFSP and associated policies, it is thus important to consider the UK’s prior participation in it to fully understand the impact caused by Brexit. This perspective is different from one which considers Brexit as inducing a general reputational loss for the EU in foreign policy, and one which emphasizes the symbolic importance of the UK’s military and foreign policy clout. In short, in the following, this article considers the UK’s prior participation in the day-to-day administration of the CFSP and CSDP in order to assess the extent to which the UK’s formal separation from the EU is likely to affect these policy areas in practice. This perspective also allows to consider how Brexit has been anticipated within the EU’s administrative structures, thus reducing its likely impact on the policies in question even further.

Brexit’s impact on human resources in CFSP and CSDP structures

11The first aspect of administrative disintegration considered here is that of human resources, i.e. the impact on officials involved in the day-to-day central administration of both CFSP and CSDP matters. A consideration of the individuals concerned is important, as any change resulting from Brexit necessarily impacts the functioning of administrative procedures, which typically rely heavily on knowledge of standard operating procedures and detailed skills that bureaucrats gain over time.

12The focus here is on the European External Action Service (EEAS), the central bureaucracy for the EU’s CFSP. Its set-up differs from that of the other EU institutions given that a large portion of its staff is meant to consist of seconded member state officials so as to ensure a feeling of ownership of this service amongst member state administrations. With the United Kingdom having had one of the largest diplomatic services of all EU member states and one of the largest populations (13% of the EU total while still a member), one could expect an important impact on EEAS human resources due to Brexit.

13A second group that could be expected to be relatively large and that would also be impacted by disintegration is UK nationals who are permanent EU civil servants. These differ from seconded UK officials in that they have dedicated the entirety of their professional career to the EU. Here, their nationality would pose an issue during the Brexit disintegration process, as their loss of EU citizenship has consequences for their status within the EU’s institutions. While analysing their plight is somewhat problematic from the theoretical perspective of informal disintegration, their change of status is ultimately a related collateral damage and affects the CFSP/CSDP administratively.

14Despite what could be expected, however, the human resources impact of formal disintegration caused by Brexit is relatively limited in practice. This is due to the fact that already prior to Brexit the UK had contributed relatively little to this institution in terms of seconded staffing, and that there are disproportionally few UK nationals working in the EU’s institutions. A relative degree of informal disintegration of UK nationals from this institution thereby ultimately limits the impact of formal Brexit disintegration on them.

15UK nationals were present in all categories of EEAS staff, be they permanent EU civil servants, contract agents, or officials seconded by the UK government ahead of the UK’s formal EU withdrawal. Already prior to the Brexit vote the share of UK nationals within the EEAS was well below its share of the EU population, and in the year of the Brexit vote this stood at 5% (EEAS, 2016, 47). This is despite the fact that the EEAS strives to achieve geographical balance amongst its staff, albeit without relying on formal national quotas (Murdoch, Trondal, and Gänzle, 2014). With such a low figure of UK nationals in the service, the direct impact of the UK’s formal disintegration is minor.

16In addition to that the long period leading up to Brexit meant that the institution could already adapt in preparation. This is evidenced by a further decline of EEAS staff with UK nationality ahead of the formal withdrawal, which then stood at 3% in 2018 across all staff categories (EEAS, 2019, 49). However, it is primarily a significant reduction in the number of seconded personnel ahead of Brexit that had the largest effect on this (EEAS, 2019, 47–67), and which can be read as further informal disintegration ahead of the formal Brexit date. While still lower than the UK share of the EU population, this was the one staff category in which UK nationals had held relatively more posts ahead of the Brexit vote (UK Government, 2013, 8). The withdrawal of seconded officials from the EEAS could then not only be seen in an overall reduction of their numbers in the service, but also in the fact that those who remained held fewer key positions. Whereas in 2015 11 of the EU’s delegations abroad were headed by UK nationals, this had already declined to only 4 in 2018 (EEAS, 2019, 65). The EEAS thus prepared for the impact of the formal Brexit date by reducing reliance on UK nationals in key positions well ahead of it.

17While these numbers would indicate a significant decline in UK nationals working for the EEAS overall, some caveats apply, nonetheless. Firstly, these reports do not track changes in nationality by EEAS staff, and it is therefore possible that some of these reported reductions of UK nationals (aside from secondments) do not reflect personnel changes, but may represent UK nationals taking up a different nationality, as has been reported across the EU’s civil service (Reuters, 2018).

18In order to explain the UK’s relative informal disintegration from this service already ahead of Brexit, it is important to consider that the UK played a complicated role in the EEAS’ creation (Fiott, 2015, 78–81; Wright, 2019, 229–34). Notably, the UK government’s reservations towards this novel institution set up by the Treaty of Lisbon have not made its provision with competencies or resources an easy task (Weilandt, 2019, 145–47). These tensions between the UK’s foreign service and the EEAS have likely reduced the incentives for UK diplomats to join the service already ahead of the Brexit vote, [1] which was only rendered worse once it became clear that the UK would eventually leave the union.

19Whereas an ending of secondments from the UK to the EEAS is a straightforward consequence of Brexit, the matter is more complex for EU civil servants of UK nationality. While continued employment and use of UK nationals in other parts of the EU bureaucracy does not provide cause for concern, the matter is more complex for UK nationals working in the EU’s delegations abroad: it was made clear by the heads of both Commission and EEAS’ civil services that UK nationals would have to return home to headquarters in Brussels (Selmayr and Schmid, 2018) given applicable international law and EU staff regulations. This means that Brexit effectively bars UK nationals from serving in the EU’s delegations abroad. While these can continue working for the EEAS or in foreign policy related postings in the Commission, their careers are ultimately on hold given the restrictions on possible positions and the lack of a member state government sponsor that could help them attain key posts (Interview 5). While a replacement of UK secondments by officials from the 27 member states is thus the most relevant effect of Brexit disintegration on the EEAS as a whole, on a personal level Brexit has significantly complicated the working life of those EU civil servants of UK nationality within the EEAS who chose to remain within the institution.

20This issue of staffing was not limited to the EEAS as the largest CFSP institution, but also affected other EU agencies ultimately supervised by the EEAS. [2] Given the very low number of seconded national experts in these, the main issue would once more be UK nationals working regularly in these entities. One institution that needs to be considered here is the EU Satellite Centre (EU SatCen), based in Spain. [3] This entity provides EU CFSP decision-making and operations with satellite imagery and analysis based on it. Much like in the case of the EEAS mentioned above, the British nationality of some of its staff would ultimately prove to be problematic for formal Brexit disintegration. Specifically, six members of its permanent staff still held UK passports in May 2020. This represents an issue after the end of the transition period, as all SatCen staff require a security clearance, which can only be granted to EU citizens. In consequence, the contracts of the employees in question were to be terminated by the end of the transition period.

21Both the European Defence Agency (EDA) and the EU Institute for Security Studies (EUISS), the EU’s Paris-based in-house think-tank on security and defence issues also faced similar dilemmas, with 2 of the EDA’s 140 staff and 2 of the EUISS staff holding UK nationality. While one of the EDA staff in question was looking to obtain EU nationality by the end of the transition period, the other person will be let go by not extending the existing work contract. This low share of UK involvement in these institutions, and the EDA, in particular, is once more likely due to its prior reluctance to partake in most of their projects (Bakker, Drent, and Zandee, 2017, 5), demonstrating the possibility for informal disintegration in parts of the CSDP.

22While Brexit ultimately affects existing staffing arrangements within key CFSP structures, the UK’s novel status as a third country also impacts the overall CFSP resources that need to be devoted to it. Originally most official interaction between the UK’s foreign policy structures and those of the EU occurred through the EU’s political institutions in Brussels. However, this is now no longer the case. Ironically, this could lead to an increase in EEAS and other EU personnel working on EU ties with the UK, as well as an increase in UK staff devoted to ties to the EU based in Brussels (Interview 1).

23While the UK’s prior integration into EU structures allowed the EU’s presence within the UK to be relatively lean, with a Commission office based in London much like in all other EU member states, this has been transformed to become the EU Delegation to the UK. [4] In line with this change, the office is no longer headed by a Commission representative, but rather the first EU ambassador to the country, João Vale de Almeida. Given that the UK is one of the world’s most important economies, a direct neighbour to the EU, and partially tied to the EU through the Withdrawal Agreement, the functioning of the EU’s ties to this country now outside of EU structures will thus likely require an increase in staffing well beyond that of the prior Commission representation. The same will be the case for the UK’s former permanent representation to the EU in Brussels, which transformed itself into the UK Mission to the EU. Here, the consequence of formal disintegration caused by Brexit may thus be that the human resources invested into the now external bilateral EU-UK relationship may actually increase in the future.

24Overall, however, the UK’s reluctance to contribute to CFSP institutions with secondments of their own staff, and the relatively low share of UK nationals in the EU’s institutions, mean that the human resource impacts of formal Brexit developments on CFSP structures are lower than could have been expected. While the low share of UK nationals in EU institutions was once perceived as an important problem (UK Government, 2013), this unintended form of informal disintegration already prior to Brexit has now rendered the human resources effects of the UK’s formal withdrawal from the EU less acute than could otherwise have been the case.

Information and expertise

25While the above has considered the effect of Brexit disintegration on the staffing of relevant CFSP and CSDP structures, this section instead focuses on the more abstract resource of the UK’s contribution of information and wider expertise to the administration of CFSP and CSDP matters within the EU. Here, the impacts of Brexit will be more acutely felt, as the UK participated in all manners of intergovernmental CFSP and CSDP decision-making given its intergovernmental nature. It thus brought its wider expertise to the table.

26Much like for any other kind of EU decision-making and internal deliberation, the formal Brexit date marked the UK’s exclusion from all CFSP and CSDP deliberation and decision-making structures, including dialogue bodies with third parties (Official Journal of the European Union, 2020, Art. 129). This is a much more significant change in the EU’s intergovernmental areas of decision-making though, given that member state governments play a much larger role in administering them.

27For meetings in the framework of the Council of the EU, this departure of UK officials represents a considerable loss of expertise given the country’s extensive diplomatic network across the globe and the intelligence resources it has. Indeed, it has been considered that the main value of the UK’s contribution to the CFSP was in its coordinating role in formal EU bodies (Martill and Sus, 2018, 850). This has often facilitated decision-making within CFSP structures and is now barred since the formal Brexit date (Interview 1, 4). This is problematic for certain geographic areas such as parts of Asia in which few other member states have similar expertise (Interview 4).

28The UK’s contribution was particularly important for the EU’s sanctions policy. Sanctions are a unique feature of the CFSP which allows the EU to utilize its economic might towards political ends (Moret and Pothier, 2018, 179; Portela, 2010, 19–34). With a large increase in the number of EU sanctions in place, it is also one of the most actively used CFSP policy tools overall (European Union Committee, 2017, 14).

29While a consideration of the EU’s sanctions policy from a macro perspective would be concerned with aspects such as a loss of effectiveness given the reduction of the size of the EU’s economy, there are a number of important aspects in which the UK contributed at the administrative level. Not only did the UK facilitate low-level intra-EU diplomatic efforts in support of an active sanctions policy, but also through the provision of expertise improving the design and implementation of EU sanctions. Here the country ultimately provided crucial information necessary for the targeting of sanctions (Moret and Pothier, 2018, 184–85; European Union Committee, 2017, 21).

30The provision of expertise did not only occur within member state-led Council structures, but also through secondment of expert UK staff to the EU’s institutions administering sanctions (European Union Committee, 2017, 37). Much like for the EEAS as such, the end of such secondments impacts the know-how present within the EU institutions on sanctions policy. While other member states could ultimately make up for this shortfall in terms of personnel, the UK’s intelligence network and expertise on sanctions policy cannot be replaced easily (Interview 4). Here, the UK’s prior choice to play an active role in EU sanctions activity thus increased the impact of the country’s formal disintegration in this area. Even when assuming a willingness of both the UK and the EU to continue cooperating on sanctions policy, it will likely turn out to be less effective given that bilateral EU-UK cooperation will necessarily increase the time necessary to design future sanctions (Interview 4).

31While the UK’s departure from CSDP institutions is considered as a loss by some officials partaking in them (Svendsen and Adler-Nissen, 2019, 1426), this is not the case for discussions on so-called Permanent Structured Cooperation (PESCO) which allows willing member states to undertake collective defence projects under the CSDP. Here, the UK had been keen to slow down or outright block further developments even after Brexit, which was not well received by most other member states (Interviews 1, 4). Their representatives emphasized even ahead of the UK’s formal withdrawal that UK officials were welcome to attend PESCO meetings while still formally a member of the EU, [5] but that their active participation was not welcome (Interview 1).

32Even where information exchange and the sharing of expertise on CFSP matters may be desired in the future, this would likely still be problematic given how the UK’s formal disintegration affects the ability to share information between the EU and its member states on the one hand, and the UK, on the other. While many aspects of the UK government’s interaction with those of the EU member states previously occurred in Brussels within the confines of the Council of the EU, the UK is no longer able to use the Council’s physical and IT infrastructure, including for confidential communication. This has led to a warning to EU and national officials to no longer share confidential information with UK officials after the formal Brexit date (Brundsen and Khan, 2020).

EU policy resources

33In addition to the two aspects considered above which affect the EU’s capacity to administer both the CFSP and CSDP, as well as providing its administration with the necessary information and expertise, this section details how Brexit affects the EU’s resource endowment to continue operating under its CFSP and CSDP. While this section also discusses the loss of certain personnel from EU policy-making, the focus this time is on such resources necessary to conduct EU policy, rather than on how they are administered centrally.

Conclusion

52This article has considered how Brexit impacts the administration of the EU’s CFSP and CSDP, focusing on administrative issues such as human resources, information and expertise and the resources available for the EU’s policy conduct on the ground. It has argued that the ultimate impact of Brexit on these policies is smaller than could be expected overall, but highly varied depending on the specific aspect of the policies that one considers. This is due to the fact that the nature of the policies at hand has allowed the United Kingdom to already partake less in them ahead of Brexit than would be possible in supranational aspects of the EU.

53Ultimately, the UK had practiced a form of informal disintegration from some elements of these policies ahead of Brexit, which has rendered the policy impact of formal Brexit disintegration less acute. The flexibility of participation in these policy areas has also allowed the UK’s involvement in these to diminish after the Brexit decision had been taken, but before Brexit came into effect formally. Overall, this article thus shows that the disintegration that results from Brexit is actually highly varied depending on the policy area at hand, and that in addition to debates on the macro-level effects of Brexit, informal and administrative aspects of the Brexit process should also receive scholarly attention. Informality may also prove to be relevant for the future of ties between the EU and the UK in the realm of foreign and security policy. Here, the UK’s lack of attempts to negotiate a bilateral agreement for cooperation on these policies will likely lead to a period in which informal and ad-hoc cooperation is expected to be the norm (Whitman, 2020).