Five months after the British vote to leave the European Union, the question of what Brexit will look like remains as elusive as ever.
A leaked Deloitte report last week pointed to the gargantuan challenge ahead for the United Kingdom. It stated that up to 30,000 extra civil servants may be needed to help extricate the country from 43 years of legislation, regulation and the complex trade arrangements enshrined in the single market.
In Brussels, the vacuum that has built up ahead of Britain's invocation of article 50 is being utilised by the EU side.
While the mantra of “no negotiation without notification” of article 50 is continuing to govern the EU’s response to Brexit, preparations are quietly under way.
As British Eurosceptics know well, Brussels has no shortage of industrious bureaucrats who thrive on the kind of tedious, complex legislative to-ing and fro-ing that will characterise the British exit negotiations.
The three main EU institutions have appointed specific Brexit teams, which are liaising with representatives of the 27 member states. Reports that Britain could face an “exit bill” of up to €60 billion, taking into account everything from pension liabilities to committed budget funds, are not far off the mark, according to senior sources.
Warnings
Signs of toughening resolve from Brussels have been reflected in a series of warnings from senior European politicians over the last week. Eurogroup chairman and Dutch finance minister Jeroen Dijsselbloem dismissed British foreign secretary Boris Johnson's suggestion that Britain could leave the customs union but still have free trade with the EU as "intellectually impossible" and "politically unavailable". German finance minister Wolfgang Schäuble said Britain could face billions in EU payments even after it leaves.
For Ireland the upcoming exit talks present a particular challenge as the country tries to keep the lines of communication open with London while at the same time reassuring other EU members that it is not too close to Britain, particularly if it wants to lure EU agencies such as the European Medicines Agency to the State – a decision that will be made by the remaining 27 member states.
Ensuring that Ireland’s unique perspective is understood by the senior players in the Brexit negotiations will be a crucial challenge for Irish diplomats and politicians.
To that extent, confirmation by the Taoiseach at last month's EU summit that European Commission president Jean-Claude Juncker is committed to addressing the Northern Ireland issue during the early part of the negotiations is good news for Ireland. The appointment of an Irish commission official to the European Commission's Brexit taskforce headed by former French commissioner Michel Barnier is also a positive development.
But despite the political will to address the Northern Irish issue, there are no easy answers. In particular, the indication from Johnson that Britain will leave the customs union is hugely concerning. The certainty of tariffs on goods and services in the event that Britain leaves the customs union would leave Ireland highly exposed given the levels of exports into the British market.
It would almost certainly lead to some form of Border checks, though technological solutions such as number-plate recognition may come into play.
But a myriad of other issues, unique to Ireland, have been opened up by the British vote.
The impact of Brexit on the energy market promises to be highly complex. With essentially an all-island electricity market operating between Northern Ireland and the Republic, the fact that one part of the market will not be in the EU is problematic. Ireland also imports a huge amount of its energy from the UK, which will soon be out of the EU. The impact on the North-South and East-West interconnectors is another unknown.
Officials also point to Britain's imminent exit from the common fisheries policy, which is likely to mean that Irish fishing trawlers, as well as countries such as France and Denmark, will be no longer able to fish off Britain. This could in turn lead to more pressure in the fishing waters of the remaining member states, including Ireland, as member states compete for less fishing water.
Ireland’s dependence on British ports for landing fish will also come into play, while there is a real prospect that the entire common fisheries policy may have to be reopened for negotiation following Britain’s withdrawal – a move that could reignite the bitter recriminations over the impact of Ireland’s EU membership on the indigenous fishing industry that surfaced in the early years of EU membership.
New alliances
Apart from the fiendishly complex “divorce” negotiations which will get under way early next year, on a political level, Britain’s imminent departure from the EU is already forcing Ireland to forge new alliances as it loses one of its closest allies around the union’s table.
Already, Irish officials in Brussels are reinforcing alignments with economically like-minded countries such as Estonia, the Czech Republic and the Nordic and Benelux countries. Ireland and the Netherlands, for example, are behind a letter urging the commission to bring forward an ambitious services package next month which will make it easier for companies to do business across the single market.
Minister for European Affairs Dara Murphy has visited Helsinki, Stockholm and Copenhagen in recent weeks and will visit Estonia shortly.
The 85-strong staff in the Irish embassy to the EU is likely to be bulked up in the coming months, with possibly some senior officials in key government departments in Dublin such as agriculture, justice and trade transferring to Brussels temporarily.
Despite some recent soul-searching about Ireland’s future in the EU, the Taoiseach and the vast majority of political parties in the country have said they are committed to Ireland’s future in the union.
As Ireland prepares for the most difficult EU negotiations in decades, the time has now come to prove it.
Suzanne Lynch is European Correspondent