The Brexit referendum and the fallout from it will be among the most heavily scrutinized themes of the next quarter. And though it may have been the most visible confirmation of the European Union’s disintegration, it was May 1, 2004, that sowed the seeds of London’s departure.
On that day, a day that came to be known, perhaps ironically, as the “Day of Welcomes,” the bloc admitted 10 countries – the Czech Republic, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Poland, Slovakia, Slovenia, Malta, and Cyprus – into its ranks. It epitomized an era of unprecedented EU expansion and honored the promise of prosperity that sold the European project to so many countries that were all too eager to buy it, particularly those that for decades had been bridled by the Soviet Union. The European Union now had 10 more members, each with its own set of policy priorities, national identity, rules of law, economic irregularities and methods of regulating them. Their accession created differences that simply could not be reconciled, for no country can be expected to subordinate its own well-being to another’s.
Twelve years later, the United Kingdom – a country unique not for its inclusion in the Continental bloc but for the tepidness with which it joined – voted to leave the European Union altogether. It was always clear that it would be among the first EU members to leave, even if it was unclear precisely when it would choose to do so. But leave it will, and the next three months will be messy as the United Kingdom sorts itself out and as a general air of uncertainty impairs the British economy and the European Union at large.
This post was published at FinancialSense on 07/11/2016.
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