From Variable Geometry EU to Variable Geometry Europe?

We revisit the variable geometry debate, arguing that it was with the EU’s deepening of integration to EMU that EU differentiated integration has reached its limits and the UK’s position in the EU became untenable. Our main thesis is that variable geometry can only work around a common solid core. After the Single Market of the EU in the 1990s, EMU is at the (political and economic) core of the EU. Other early exercises of variable geometry (‘open partnerships’) such as the Schengen Agreement have in the meantime moved also to core of the EU. Based on the lessons of the Eurozone crisis and Brexit, we argue that variable geometry is not sustainable in the core EU institutions (EMU, Schengen) but that it may only work for secondary matters. It follows that countries that harbour preferences that are too divergent for the Union to function properly should invoke Article 50 TEU and opt for some type of association status. This has been the option of the UK that, after dithering, decided to depart from the EU in January 2020, and of some former EFTA countries, which have opted not to join the EU but nevertheless stay close in its orbit (Norway, Iceland, Lichtenstein, in the single market through their European Economic Area membership, and Switzerland, with a series of bilateral agreements with the EU that shadow single market membership). Our point is that for the Union to deliver on its objectives and for the European process of integration to be politically sustainable there should be a variable geometry Europe but not a variable geometry EU. That is, all EU countries should be in all the main EU institutions, notably EMU and Schengen, or leave the Union and opt for membership of the EEA or for a free trade agreement with the EU (which seems the preferred option of the UK).