IS THE THE UK ALREADY AN OUTSIDER TO SIGNIFICANT PART OF EU POLICY MAKING?

Since becoming a member of the EU in 1973, the United Kingdom has negotiated opt-outs on key parts of EU legislation, and a sizeable rebate from the EU annual budget.

1. The UK is the EU country with the highest overall number of opt-outs and special clauses. The UK is the most detached from the core EU integration, most notably of course by staying outside the Eurozone.
2. The UK has the only permanent opt-out next to Denmark in the monetary union. In recent years, this has extended to all forms of closer economic integration surrounding the Eurozone, e.g. the Euro Plus Pact, the Fiscal Compact or the banking union.
3. The UK is not part of the border free Schengen area along with Ireland.
4. From the Lisbon Treaty, Britain also secured opt-outs from justice and home affairs legislation.
5. More technical, but no less important, the UK is not a signatory to the Fundamental Charter of Human Rights.

All in all, these are quite substantial policy opt-outs. In particular if we look at the high profile topics debated within the EU of the last couple of years – the European debt crisis, migration issues, closer economic coordination – the UK is an outsider to the majority of them.

However, if we look at the actual EU legislation being adopted, the size of the British opt-outs seems to be much smaller. Taking the figures from Eur-Lex, since the entry into force of the Lisbon Treaty (Dezember 2009 – July 2013) the EU institutions have adopted or amended some 384 directives and over 5000 regulations. But the UK’s opt-outs fall mainly in areas where the EU does adopt little or only targeted legislation. In effect, less than one hundred legislative acts of the last four years did not have an effect on the UK. These were mostly evenly divided between monetary policy, economic policy specifically targeted towards the Eurozone, as well as the AFSJ and Schengen. In the ‘machine room’ of the EU, the UK is thus for the most part still taking part in decision-making and being affected by EU legislation.

Even more interesting is the willingness of the UK government to make extensive use of the opt-in clauses granted within the AFSJ and Schengen, by which the UK can take part in single legislative acts. In fact, over the course of the last three years the government has decided to take part in over 60 per cent of new AFSJ measures despite the rhetoric of wanting to distance itself from further EU cooperation. This is true to a lesser extent for Schengen, where the UK does indeed pass upon the majority of legislative acts passed.

In conclusion, even the UK government under severe pressure from Eurosceptic forces seems to see the practical need to join European cooperation in such cross border issues. However, the high profile opt-outs from the main political questions dominating the future of the European project, put more and more question marks on the importance of the UK sitting at the top table.  Finally, the current size of the opt-outs shows how significant the current move to retreat from over a hundred AFSJ measures is. New high profile opt-outs like from the Fiscal Compact or the Banking Union further cement this development. Even before the renegotiation with the EU, despite the use of opt-ins, the UK has already become a permanent outsider to a significant part of EU policy-making.