Europe Letter: EU’s talks with UK carried out in unprecedented secrecy

Scarred by past incidents in which details about planned Brexit deals leaked out and caused a political backlash that damaged the chances of an agreement being finalised, European Union officials kept the talks over how to resolve the Northern Ireland Protocol dispute under unusually tight secrecy as they inched towards a deal.

A town usually replete with leaks became an information vacuum in recent weeks, in awareness that the major hurdles to a deal remain the fractious politics of Westminster, and the difficulty of persuading the Democratic Unionist Party that their test for agreeing to restore Northern Ireland’s powersharing institutions has been met.

Well aware that any stray remark by a commissioner or diplomat can become an inflammatory tabloid headline about Brussels meddling, the EU side maintained a monkish silence to give British prime minister Rishi Sunak the political space to manage the announcement of a deal.

Above all, the EU wanted to avoid getting drawn into a spiral of retaliatory declarations that would pit the EU and UK against each other as antagonists in a public spat. It’s widely regretted that this dynamic took hold during the pandemic, in an episode remembered by the British press as “vaccine wars”.

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This is a game that Brussels can only lose, and more seriously it would risk imperilling the projection of Western unity. This is considered vital to efforts to internationally isolate Russia over its invasion of Ukraine, and more important than ever in the week of its one-year anniversary.

Starved therefore of all but the most banal statements, journalists and diplomats began to scrutinise and trade among themselves small details that are normally of little consequence, but in the absence of other information took on a portentous aspect.

News that one European Commission official who usually deals with the Brexit file had taken a two-week holiday up until this Monday filtered out among the press pack and embassies, with some attributing special significance to the date of his return.

The timing of a decision to add new journalists to a WhatsApp group used to distribute news by an embassy last week also seemed to suggest that developments were on their way. I realised the situation had come to an absurd point when this titbit was solemnly noted as potentially significant by a diplomat to whom I passed the gossip on.

In the many years in which talks have gone on, the UK and EU have developed a formulaic language to communicate progress to journalists, and long-time observers can detect underlying developments from subtle changes in the words used.

A reference in a tweet by the European Commission’s point man on the Protocol issue, Maroš Šefcovic, that stressed “everyday concerns in Northern Ireland” on Monday for example is an indirect dismissal of the insistence by English Conservative Party hardliners on removing the role of the European Court of Justice as an arbitrator of disputes – a point of principle for Brexiteers with little public purchase.

The use of a phrase not seen before – “Hard work but time well invested” – in an earlier communication was heralded as a signal that progress was under way. This was ultimately borne out; Mr Sunak was on his way to Belfast within a week.

The linguistic subtleties might seem pedantic, but they often are the way in which crucial underlying differences are communicated.

To recap, the Protocol on Ireland/Northern Ireland was agreed in October 2019. It had been requested by the government of prime minister Boris Johnson, negotiated by his closest team, and was hailed as a great success by he and his hard-Brexit allies, who then hastily pushed it through the Westminster parliament and trumpeted it as a success in the election that followed.

When their esteem for the deal subsequently soured, the EU, after some reluctance, agreed to once again resume the kind of Brexit-related talks with UK officials they had hoped had ended.

But the EU always insisted that the Protocol agreement itself was not up for renegotiation – the text would not be “reopened”, in the lingo. These new talks were about how to ease the practical implementation of the existing deal. Initially, the European Commission even objected to the use of the word “negotiations” to describe the discussions, as this suggested the prior agreement was up for debate.

A statement from Downing Street on Tuesday reflected there had been a rapprochement between the two sides under the Sunak government. It described the talks not as an overhaul of the agreement itself, as Britain once wanted, but about “resolving the issues caused by the way the Protocol was being enforced”.