2021 marked the official start of a post-Brexit era for the European Union (EU) since the United Kingdom (UK) had only fully withdrawn when the transition period lapsed on 31 December 2020. The transition period prevented the EU and the UK from falling off a cliff before a mutual Trade and Cooperation Agreement (TCA) was to be ratified and implemented into UK law by Parliament before 1 January 2021. This cumbersome process marked the pinnacle of a three-decades long period of European integration which saw the political architecture of the EU gradually shift from a system characterized by integration to one that is more succinctly marked by differentiation. Using Brexit and the Covid-19 pandemic as cases in point, we argue that differentiation has become the system property of the EU's institutional polyarchic architecture. While differentiation has sometimes been conceived as being mostly temporary in nature, we may think of a differentiation of the EU's political order as a permanent and systemic property.
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Jarle Trondal, Stefan Gänzle, Benjamin Leruth
Differentiation in the European Union in Post-Brexit and -Pandemic Times: Macro-Level Developments with Meso-Level Consequences
Journal of Common Market Studies, 2022, 60(1), pp. 26-37.
DOI: 10.1111/jcms.13404