The reaction to the British election in Brussels was one of wait-and-see and of puzzlement, with some element of schadenfreude over Theresa May's predicament – although that was not publicly expressed.
“The British people have spoken, but what did they say?” was how one official put it.
British intentions and their Brexit negotiating strategy have been a matter of conjecture for some time, and no one will be any the wiser until a new government has been formed. Whether the ministerial negotiating team of David Davis, Boris Johnson and Liam Fox will even remain the same is far from clear.
Some senior European politicians want to stick to the current timetable, under which talks are due to begin this month
The result has also injected some uncertainty over when the first phase of talks will begin. European Commission president Jean-Claude Juncker said the EU was ready to start Brexit talks and he hoped the UK would be able to form a government as soon as possible. “I hope that the British will be able to form as soon as possible a stable government,” he said. “I don’t think that things now have become easier but we are ready.”
The union's chief Brexit negotiator, Michel Barnier, said the talks should only begin when the UK is ready. Some senior European politicians want to stick to the current timetable, under which talks are due to begin this month. "#Brexit negotiations should start when UK is ready; timetable and EU positions are clear," Barnier tweeted. "Let's put our minds together on striking a deal."
But Manfred Weber, the German MEP who leads the largest bloc in the European Parliament – the centre-right European People's Party – suggested nothing had changed. "The clock is running for #Brexit," he tweeted. "That means the UK urgently needs a government that can negotiate. The date of the start of negotiations is uncertain now."
More crucially, there is much speculation about how the new parliamentary arithmetic may affect the tone and thrust of the British position. May had sought a strong mandate on the basis that a “strong and stable” government under her leadership would have a stronger negotiating position.
But that aspiration, now confounded by the electorate, had never held much currency in Brussels, where a strong mandate was seen primarily not as affecting the Brussels-London balance of forces, but as a means of strengthening May’s hand within her own party. Perhaps it would enable her, the optimists suggested, to tack towards a softer, “more realistic” Brexit posture.
Diminished May
Now we are back to the status quo ante, with a much diminished May, a new dynamic in the uncertain role and demands of the new essential partner, the DUP, and a Tory parliamentary party whose Eurosceptic hardliners are far less likely to be constrained.
Irish officials on Friday were not reassured that the UK is moving closer to their position
Although the possibility of having to rely on Labour support against that Tory rump might suggest that a softer line on customs union and single-market membership would be possible, it is far from clear how May, or a successor if she does not survive, will try to square this circle.
Irish officials on Friday were not reassured that the UK is moving closer to their position, although there may be some comfort in comments by Brexit secretary David Davis to Sky News that the election was, in part, about getting a mandate for “the sort of Brexit we want”.
Davis suggested the UK government may have lost a mandate to exit the customs union and single market. “[Our manifesto] said we wanted to leave the customs union and the single market, but get access to them. That’s what it was about, that’s what we put in front of the British people – we’ll see by tomorrow whether they’ve accepted that or not,” he said.
The role of the DUP is a cause of much speculation. Its strong Brexit line in the referendum has since been fleshed out with demands that the UK must not make a special case of any settlement for the North. Whether that in practice means an unwillingness to support the continuation of an open Border, and the safeguarding of the Common Travel Area, also applicable in the rest of the UK, should become clear reasonably soon.
It is likely, however, that the DUP will see the arrangement to support a new Tory government as an opportunity to leverage domestic policy in Northern Ireland rather than a distinctively hardline Brexit position.
