Michel Barnier has had an incredible run as the EU’s Brexit negotiator. But starting now, his luck and limelight are running out.
We may be about to hit peak Barnier.
When Jean-Claude Juncker in 2016 made the surprise move to appoint Barnier — his former rival for the post of European Commission president — few could have imagined that in summer 2018 we would be waking to headlines such as “EU’s Barnier throws Brexit bone to battered Theresa May” and “Michel Barnier kills off Theresa May’s Brexit customs proposals.”
Theresa May is the elected head of government of a nuclear-armed European power. Barnier is neither elected nor her appointed interlocutor, and he definitely doesn’t have the nuclear codes.
Yet his patrician manner, high-class team and Continent-crossing work ethic have led most to conclude that thus far he has run rings around the U.K. negotiating team.
Certainly, the U.K. wants to see the back of what they regard as Barnier’s inflexibility.
Piling up relationships in an effort to sustain EU solidarity didn’t hurt Barnier’s political future either.
Having been dealt that hand, Barnier played it deftly. His “clock is ticking” routine at press conferences worked because it had the undeniable ring of truth to it.
His use of the Irish border issue, which cast Ireland as Britain’s smaller put-upon Anglophone foil, was smart: Ireland’s EU27 counterparts are genuinely sympathetic and it was a cost-free way to preserve EU27 solidarity while keeping May’s Democratic Unionist Party-dependent government divided.
The EU negotiator is, however, running out of cards.
In his ideal world, a Brexit deal would have been all but wrapped up at the June EU leaders’ summit. At the very least, the outlines of a solid consensus — particularly on the Ireland backstop — would have been worked out, ready for inking in October.
That timeline would have allowed Barnier to glide into consideration for his European People’s Party’s (EPP) nomination for the post of European Commission president. (Nominations open in September.)
In that scenario, Barnier’s biggest problem at the tail-end of 2018 would have been convincing his president — Emmanuel Macron — to cross party lines and support him as European Commission president.
Now, with the U.K.’s so-called Chequers plan on the ropes, and little hope of a new consensus emerging before the Conservative Party conference in the first week of October, Barnier is stuck in the Brexit mud rather than gliding into presidential view.
His famous Brexit clock has ticked so far that it will now take national leaders, rather than officials, to rescue a deal. And it is doubtful that will be possible by the October EU summit.
While it has suited EU leaders to leave the talks up to him so far, they will soon smell the political urgency of doing a Brexit deal, and with each day will push him further from the spotlight.
Certainly, the U.K. wants to see the back of what they regard as Barnier’s inflexibility. It now has a Brexit secretary, in Dominic Raab, who shows up; and on Thursday the government will release its first batch of detailed contingency plans for no deal.
Across Europe, touring British ministers have spent the summer whipping up headlines about trade chaos and lost jobs the day after a no-deal Brexit. And at the European Parliament, MEPs see their right to veto any Brexit deal as a chance to seize more power for their institution within the EU system.
Barnier now has competition and it will only get tougher from here on in.
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