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Home , Slovakia

ISSN: 2560-1601

Vol. 26, No. 4 (SK)

Febr 2020

Slovakia external relations briefing: Brexit Negotiations Juraj Ondriaš

1052 Petőfi Sándor utca 11.

+36 1 5858 690 Kiadó: Kína-KKE Intézet Nonprofit Kft. office@-cee.eu Szerkesztésért felelős személy: Chen Xin

Kiadásért felelős személy: Huang Ping china-cee.eu 2017/01

Brexit Negotiations

February 1st 2020 marked the first day after the had withdrawn from the EU. However, many outstanding issues between the UK on the one hand, and the EU and its member states on the other, created by the reality of this withdrawal, remain to be resolved. The threat of an immediate hard Brexit was averted with the implementation of a transition period, which will last till the end of 2020. But this only means that the negotiations to resolve many of the difficult issues are still looming ahead. For this reason the EU member states, among them, are anxious to ensure that their national interests and priorities are taken into account by the EU negotiating team in the process and outcome of the negotiations. In a meeting with the UK ambassador to Slovakia on 20th, just before Brexit, the Slovak Vice-Minister of Foreign and European Affairs František Ružička said that the Slovak priorities in the upcoming negotiations are the rights of Slovak citizens (and EU citizens in general) in the UK, as well as trade, cooperation in the areas of transportation, justice (such as police and cooperation) and social affairs (again, primarily the social rights of Slovak citizens living and working in the UK). Such priorities are understandable, since the UK is one of the destinations for looking for work and study opportunities abroad, with various statistics showing 60 000 to 100 000 Slovak citizens living in the country, with the higher number being quoted most often. This amounts to between one and two percent of the population of Slovakia itself. Apart from safeguarding interests of these citizens as is the duty of Slovak , the Slovak government has a more pragmatic reason to focus its diplomatic efforts in this direction, as there are worries in Slovakia of a mass return of Slovaks from the UK. Such a trend would raise in Slovakia and decrease the amount of remittances from the UK which could lead to the worsening of the economic situation in Slovakia in a period when the economy is already slowing down. This trend would also put pressure on the social safety net of Slovakia in a situation where the strain on public finances due to on programs is set to grow. Slovakia would also like for the EU and UK to retain a strong partnership in security and diplomatic cooperation. One important reason for this is the UK’s staunch support of the role on NATO in European security. Slovakia, like almost all other Central and Eastern European (CEE) countries, always saw NATO as the main guarantor of security in in general and in the CEE in particular. These CEE countries are skeptical of suggestions coming from some EU member states from Western Europe about the EU building an alternative security

1 system to NATO. The UK was a strong ally of the CEE states on this issue, and they would like the UK to remain involved in this debate in some way. Because of the large number of Slovaks whose lives will be influenced by the outcome of the Brexit negotiations, whether directly (by living in the UK) or indirectly (such as their family members or professional colleagues), this topic is followed closely by the media, which often brought up various aspects of Brexit. One issue that cropped up in the Slovak media was the EU settlement scheme set up by the UK, which calls for the mandatory registration of EU citizens and their children living in the UK and not holding British citizenship. Children from mixed marriages between Slovakia and British citizens are an especially relevant issue in Slovakia, since Slovak forbids its citizens from holding dual citizenship. The parents of these children will therefore have to either choose British citizenship for their children and forfeit the Slovak one, or choose Slovak citizenship and register them in the settlement scheme. If the children were not registered, they would risk legal troubles such as being identified as illegal residents, as stated in a warning by the UK Home Office for the public television of Slovakia. A major topic of concern is of course the status of Slovak laborers in the UK. As mentioned, their number is approaching 100 000, and while most of them are employed in construction, industry or low-skilled service jobs, there are many, especially in the Greater , who are employed in managerial and other highly skilled positions. There have been discussions in the UK over amending the conditions for immigration to the country from the EU. One suggestion has been that unskilled workers face a limit on how many years they will be allowed to stay in the country on their work permits, such as two years, as opposed to between three and five years for skilled professionals. By contrast there have been calls to abolish restrictions on immigration of skilled labor. Such a development would not be beneficial for Slovakia or most of the Slovak immigrants in the UK, as described above. Indeed, last year more Slovaks decided to leave the UK than arrived in the country. But while the Slovak government has been trying to lure Slovaks working abroad back to Slovakia, it is interested mainly in highly skilled workers, which the UK would want to keep as well. Most recently, in February 2020, the British government unveiled a new point-based immigration system to be put in place after the transition period is over. According to this system, those people wishing to obtain or a work permit in the UK, whether from the EU or from a third country, will be allocated points based on criteria such as their level of education, the desirability of their skill set on the British job market and their proficiency in the . The system is meant to ensure that future immigration will be limited to skilled migrants, and thereby to block the inflow of unskilled and cheap labor. The British government

2 specifically mentioned Europe and the EU as the source of such labor while unrolling the system. Another important issue for Slovak citizens, which gains a lot of attention from the media, is the status of students from Slovakia that are studying in the UK. The Higher Education Statistics Agency of the UK claims the there were 1 750 students from Slovakia studying in the UK in the academic year 2017/2018. This is only a small fraction of the more than 30 000 Slovak students studying abroad (of which about two thirds study in the Czech ). Interestingly, Brexit did not seem to dampen the enthusiasm for studying in the UK. The number of student applicant to British institutions of higher education has been growing each year ever since Slovakia joined the EU in 2004 – from 285 applicants in 2006 to 810 in 2016 just before Brexit, this number grew still further to 990 applicants as of September 2019. A reason for this continuing trend is the attempt by students to make use of this opportunity to study in the UK while they still can, encouraged by the fact that he conditions for studying in the UK are not expected to change, i.e. they will still pay tuition at the same level as British students, as long as they start their studies during the transition period. What will happen beyond that date will be a matter of British domestic policy, and potentially a topic for negotiations with the EU. In any case, students wishing to remain in the UK after the end of the transition period will have to register in the European Temporary Leave to Remain database. What is less certain is the future of the Erasmus+ exchange program, which will have to be renegotiated. On the supply side, it can be expected that because of the British government’s emphasis on attracting skilled foreign labor, conditions for students from the EU should not worsen dramatically. On the side of demand, the UK will remain an attractive destination for Slovak students as long as the conditions will be favorable enough, because of the prestige of its colleges and universities as well as because of the low language barrier, as the English language is the earliest and most widely taught foreign language in primary and secondary schools in Slovakia. A relative victory for Slovak diplomacy, or at least for Slovak prestige, came when the from Slovakia, Maroš Šefčovič, was named by the President of the (EC) Ursula von der Leyen, as one of the co-chairs of the Joint Committee made up of representatives from both the EU and the UK, which will be responsible for overseeing the implementation and application of the Withdrawal Agreement. The committee is set to start its work at the end of March, and one of its tasks will be the formation of a mechanism for resolving any disputes over the interpretation of the Agreement. The naming of Šefčovič was due to his high position as one of the Vice-Presidents of the European Commission and his relevant portfolio as Commissioner for Inter-institutional Relations and

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Foresight, since the negotiated issues will be a matter of discussion between all the relevant institutions and it will have crucial implications on the future of the EU. But it was also seen as a sign of his high standing in the EC, and of the reputation of Slovak diplomacy to punch above its weight. Of course, as a member of the EC, where the commissioners are expected to be independent of their member states and focus solely on the common EU benefit, Šefčovič will not be able to push forward the priorities of Slovakia, but his presence may serve as a guarantee for Slovaks that their interests as a small country will not be ignored by the negotiators in favor of the priorities of the larger and more influential member states, which was one of the concerns of the public in Slovakia. The first round of negotiations is set to start on Monday, March 2nd, and last until Thursday, March 5th. So far, Slovakia, as well as the EU as a whole, has been more reactive than proactive, specifically reacting to new policies put forward by the British government as part of its vision for the UK after Brexit. This is not a surprise, since it is the UK that has left the EU and it has to decide on the strength of its ties with the remainder of the bloc as well as what sacrifices to its newly-regained it is willing to make. In any case, the allocated time of eleven months is quite short for such a comprehensive agreement as must be negotiated. Therefore, unless an extension to the transition period is agreed upon by both parties (which the British Prime Minister Boris Johnson has ruled out, at least for the time being), a hard or no-deal Brexit cannot yet be ruled out. And another important question to follow is whether Slovakia and the other member states will be able to present and keep up a united front toward the UK in these negotiations, or whether the British will be able to weaken any EU common position by negotiating with its members individually, offering them incentives to break ranks with the EU position. And while Slovakia officially calls for preserving unity on the EU side, Britain could exploit tensions between the older and newer EU members to disrupt such a consensus. It will be up to the member states themselves to ensure that this does not happen, and that the EU will be able to obtain the best possible deal for its citizens, Slovaks included.

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