Boris Johnson draws on the Roman Empire, but London also has a lesson for Rome (and Brussels)
Pragmatism returns between the EU and the UK: Brussels does not challenge the City and London concedes on fishing rights. But the EU's efforts to use Northern Ireland as a pressure weapon have failed and the UK returns to the negotiating table with a safety net against other possible threats. Barnier disavowed by Dublin
Si vis pacem para bellum . The Latinist and historian Boris Johnson often draws on the legacy of thought of the Roman Empire. And the lesson of Vegetio ( Epitoma rei militaris , Prologue to Book III) proved to be current and decisive of the worst crisis of confidence since the beginning of the negotiations. Faced with the escalation of the Internal Market Bill and the prospect that the break on the Northern Ireland Protocol would open an irremediable geopolitical rift, the ideology has been abandoned by everyone to go straight back to realpolitik .
Brussels started. The EU has decided not to blow up its financial system, avoiding to challenge the Euroclearing market based in the City of London with the launch of alternative infrastructures based in Europe. As a result, EU banks and financial intermediaries are free to remain in the UK system of settlement and settlement of euro-denominated transactions until at least 2022, even in the event of a no deal . Indeed, the very real risk of failure of the negotiations prompted the EU Commission to grant European branches in the UK a special license to use London for clearing and guarantee activities on derivative contracts to avoid the cliff edge . For once, the technicians prevailed in Rue de la Loi too. Although at the political level, France and Germany have launched diplomatic initiatives to relocate segments of the financial services industry to Paris and Frankfurt, the EU bureaucracy has managed to illustrate the case and explain the impossibility of replicating the Square Mile on the banks of the Seine and del Meno, without incurring additional charges of over 70 billion euros for the banks, forced to strengthen the regulatory capital in the event of loss of multi-currency netting capacity.
But London is also ready to make concessions. According to Conservative Party sources, British negotiator David Frost has already delivered an offer on fishing rights limited to the Channel Islands to Brussels. Jersey and Guernsey are close to the Normandy coast; allowing European vessels to fish in the archipelago would be enough to allay the concerns of France and Holland about access to fish resources.
The Internal Market Bill , meanwhile, was passed at first reading in Westminster by a margin of 77 votes. And Downing Street has achieved its goal: Brussels' efforts to use Northern Ireland as a pressure weapon have failed and the UK returns to the negotiating table with a safety net against other possible threats. Michel Barnier was disowned by Simon Coveney. The Irish foreign minister said the EU will never enact a lockout on food in transit from England to Northern Ireland and therefore the Internal Market Bill should never be enforced. On the other hand, after the immediate outrage against the prime minister, a sort of automatic and constant operational protocol, it was agreed in the Irish press that the mere promulgation of the Internal Market Bill does not infringe ipso facto international law and that art . 16 of the Northern Ireland Protocol effectively grants London the right to apply unilateral measures in the event of unforeseen events affecting the UK's constitutional integrity.
Nonetheless, the prime minister has to manage the tensions within the parliamentary group. An amendment by Justice Commission Chairman Sir Bob Neill to the law, if passed, would give the House of Commons the right to approve any government-initiated change to the Withdrawal Agreement (of which the NI Protocol is an annex). When the prime minister exercises his powers, the parliament claims his prerogatives. UK parliamentary democracy is capable of handling political crises. London also has a lesson for Rome.
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This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Atlantico Quotidiano at the URL http://www.atlanticoquotidiano.it/quotidiano/boris-johnson-attinge-allimpero-romano-ma-anche-londra-ha-una-lezione-per-roma-e-bruxelles/ on Mon, 21 Sep 2020 03:51:00 +0000.