The recent agreement that alleviated Brexit tendencies has just made predictions of referendum results seem very unanimous. Confirmation of British special status became even stronger, which is, in my opinion, exactly what Cameron strived for.
What attracts my interest in this article is one remarkable quote by British PM. In order to calm down more rigid eurosceptics, he said: “Britain will never be a part of EU ‘superstate’.” It’s sure that the deal was a vast diplomatic success. In a given situation, not much more could have been achieved, at the point when the European Union is facing many problems.
In other words, preservation of the European Union is the priority at all costs. So, in a short term, namely, after the referendum scheduled for June 2016, the United Kingdom will most likely stay in the EU.
All major political forces in the UK will probably support that solution; Corbyn of the Labour party has recently pledged his support for ‘In’, and Cameron’s Conservatives are surely going to present this agreement as their political victory in most of their further campaigns.
As I have already said, the deal is the most positive for today, but very problematic for the future, especially if we bear in mind Cameron’s provocative statement. How is that? It's quite clear that agreements such as this one would just contribute to the legal confirmation of a certain, especially in economic terms, spontaneous norm: superiority of certain countries, mostly northern ones, towards others. And what becomes a practice is how each deal that eliminates the threats to Europe makes them even more problematic in a certain another way.
There are two substantially different points of view.
Current government did it more successfully as it managed to satisfy both EU officials and populistic interests. What makes a crucial problem here is how nothing guarantees that, in some future, countries in a position similar to British won’t request more benefits and thus undermine the sustainability of the European project.
I would opt for another stance. The one which takes the project of united Europe as urgent. In striving for it, all possible requirements should be taken into consideration. It's useful that the US government supports Britain inside the EU. However, its downsides are analogous to our current problem.
Namely, it strengthens American influence in the EU. Even that could be useful to some extent, but some decisions should definitely be completely autonomous. Dissolution of the United Kingdom, i.e. separation of Scotland, if it somehow brings more good to the coherent European Union is also considerable.
We should note that all these observations are pretty far-fetched as they are made on very hypothetical grounds. Nevertheless, they were useful to point out the framework for the ultimately desirable outcome.
