Rebuilding A Broken Union

Brexit has exposed existential threats to the EU. President Macron and Chancellor Merkel have warned that, if the organisation cannot reform itself soon, then it will fall apart. How then, should the union go forward?

Dave Olsen
3 min readSep 3, 2018
Photo by freestocks.org from Pexels

Many people within the upper echelons of the EU wish to formalise the idea that there are different “levels” of membership. This is due to the fact that many member states have sought and attained opt-outs from EU laws surrounding security and the common currency, the euro.

The UK is one of these countries, which is a member (for now), but always floats around the edges of the union, gaining opt-outs almost whenever it wants to. However, this pushed Britain to the edge and led to Brexit, with a sense of superiority to our European counterparts emerging.

However, if the idea of an “outsider” relationship could be formalised, then there would likely be overwhelming support for Britain staying in the EU. This will also help to prevent future exits from the European Union, with many countries such as Ireland and Denmark opposing the move towards an almost federalist European project.

In addition, a formal, tiered system could help to draw in those European states that do…

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Dave Olsen

Political and policy analysis | Operations Director, politika.org.uk | Student, University of Oxford | twitter.com/dave_olsen16