Valdai Club

After the Parliament’s latest vote, the next step is to see how the EU will react to the idea of Brexit being postponed. This raises a number of challenges, primarily because the EU has to reach a unanimous agreement in order for Brexit to be delayed. So the no-deal scenario is still on the table.

The story of Brexit since the referendum vote has so far been that of a stalemate. There are two major factions in the British elite: those that see a strategic interest in remaining with the EU, and those who forecast the EU’s decline and thus believe that Britain is better abandoning a sinking ship sooner than later. The current situation with regards to Brexit can be boiled down to a simple fact: neither of these two factions so far currently holds the resources to defeat the other.

The European Parliament passed a resolution last Wednesday calling for the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline project to be cancelled. This statement came a day after the US House of Representatives passed a resolution in favour of sanctions against the pipeline project. Yet at this stage, only a force majeure could stop the completion of Nord Stream 2.

Cancelling Nord Stream 2 would be a colossal blow to Russian-German cooperation in energy supplies and to German credibility in any future negotiations with Russia, both on the state and the business levels.

There is a battle raging for Berlin. It is not only an internal struggle between German elites and the parties that represent their interests. This battle has an international dimension. For the last 70 years, Germany has lived in a tandem with the United States. The deal was such: in exchange for the Marshall Plan and access to American markets, Germany agreed to integrate into the West. President Trump’s speech at Davos this February marked the end of that era.