After Tony – British-German Relations Under Gordon Brown
By Simon Green and William Paterson

The departure of Prime Minister Tony Blair from Number 10 Downing Street and his succession by Gordon Brown at the end of June 2007 marks a caesura in British politics. But how does the end of this era impact on the UK's relationship to Germany, which under Tony Blair and Gerhard Schröder famously went from almost saccharine levels of mutual admiration (remember the Third Way) to the equivalent level of antipathy over the Iraq war in 2003, only to be rehabilitated following Angela Merkel's election as Chancellor in 2005?

The principal point to note in this context is that the UK's relations with Germany (beyond the soccer pitch) are embedded in and are indistinguishable from both countries' membership of the EU. Many of the ups and downs in their bilateral relations, although notably not Iraq, can be linked to what have at times been quite contrasting approaches to European integration. Thus, the highpoint of the Blair-Schröder amitié coincided with the drive to reinvigorate the EU's competitiveness, which ultimately found expression in the 2000 Lisbon Agenda. On the other hand, British-German relations during the mid-1990s were marred not only by ideological disputes over Economic and Monetary Union (EMU) between Chancellor Kohl's CDU/CSU and the Conservative Party under Prime Minister John Major, but also by the crisis of BSE in British beef.

Fortunately, these irritants in what in underlying terms is a very deep bilateral relationship now lie in the past, and neither Iraq nor EMU any longer feature prominently on the bilateral agenda. Indeed, political relations at present can even be described as extremely warm, a state of affairs for which Tony Blair and Angela Merkel can take much credit. Both countries worked together closely to defuse the potentially explosive budgetary dispute in the December 2005 European Council meeting. At the policy level, Britain and Germany have collaborated on a range of issues: for instance, and despite the UK's formal opt-in, both countries have in recent years pursued a joint agenda in developing the EU's common asylum policy. And whatever the deal on the Constitutional Treaty which ultimately is or is not struck at the June European Council meeting, at which the UK will still be represented by Tony Blair in his farewell EU summit, it is unlikely to affect British-German relations in any lasting way.

Even so, it will not be long before clouds appear on the horizon. The most significant of these is almost certainly the 2008 review of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP), which was part of the 2005 budget agreement. Not only is this likely to pit Mr. Brown, a fierce critic of CAP, directly against the new French President, Nicolas Sarkozy, but there will be renewed pressure on the UK's rebate from the EU budget, not least from Germany as the EU's largest net contributor. Just as in 2005, Chancellor Merkel could be called upon to act as an honest broker between the two sides. Future progress on the Internal Market program is a second potential cause for disagreement: Mr. Brown favors a further liberalization in the energy and financial services sectors, two areas in which Germany has in the past been reticent to follow suit. Other issues of disagreement include Turkish accession and EMU, which Gordon Brown favors and opposes respectively: these are currently latent, but should not be underestimated in terms of their potential for conflict.

In addition, there is potential for conflict in matters of style. Over recent years, Mr. Brown and his key aides have in various publications laid out their vision for the UK to pursue a more-or-less exclusively interest-driven approach to European integration. While Germany's Europapolitik has in recent years certainly also become more 'British' in this sense, the notion of European integration as an end in itself remains deeply embedded within political elites. Crucially, in key moments both Germany and France have shown themselves willing to set aside substantive differences in the interests of reaching an agreement, and this constitutes a further potential source of friction, especially if substantive German interests clash with the UK's position.

That said, there are plenty of areas in which Gordon Brown and Angela Merkel will agree. Both leaders favor trade liberalization and are likely to adopt broadly similar positions on the Doha round. Moreover, the UK and Germany have in the past been instinctively close on issues of the environment and more recently on Africa, which Germany has put on the agenda for the G8 summit at Heiligendamm in early June. Both areas are known to be close to Mr. Brown's heart.

Of course, the 'elephant in the room' in all this is France, and the key determinant of how these issues and styles play out in practice is the state of the Franco-German relationship under Nicolas Sarkozy. But a further factor to be considered is Gordon Brown's own room for maneuver in European matters. This is likely to much less than Tony Blair's, who, despite huge parliamentary majorities in both 1997 and 2001 was simply unwilling to 'sell' Europe to Britain in the way he sold Britain to Europe, or indeed to take the same huge (and ultimately fatal) risks he took to sustain the UK's special relationship with the United States. As Prime Minister, Gordon Brown will be greatly constrained by largely hostile public opinion. What is more, at the next general election in 2009-10, Mr. Brown will be facing in David Cameron not only a convinced 'Euro-skeptic,' but also the most credible Conservative challenger since Labor's 1997 victory. In this way, public and elite opinion on the EU will probably continue to complicate UK relations with Germany.

Lastly, what about the personal chemistry? Mr. Brown and Chancellor Merkel have met on a number of occasions and have begun to construct a professional relationship. That it is so far not particularly warm should not come as a surprise - neither has built their political reputation on charismatic leadership in the way that Tony Blair and Gerhard Schröder did. Instead, what both share is a common origin as children of Protestant clerics, ferocious attention to detail and formidable intellects. Recent economic improvements in Germany have also made a favorable impression on Mr. Brown who has moved from great skepticism about Germany's reform capacity to neutrality. At the same time, it remains to be seen how Gordon Brown will fare in the European Council: certainly, as Chancellor of the Exchequer, he developed an almost legendary capacity for impatience with his EU colleagues on Ecofin. He will certainly need to draw on his reserves of diplomatic discipline if he is to build a lasting alliance with Angela Merkel.

Dr Simon Green is Deputy Director and Professor William E. Paterson is Director of the Institute for German Studies at the University of Birmingham, UK. Both are regular contributors to AICGS.

This essay appeared in the May 25, 2007, AICGS Advisor.