Brussels and London will be largely satisfied with the Brexit reset deal, announced with some fanfare at Lancaster House, and the direction of travel towards a closer relationship is now clear.
The election of a Labour government was always going to sweep away the toxic baggage of the Boris Johnson years, although the insurgent threat of Reform UK could yet constrain Keir Starmer's room for manoeuvre.
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has also opened up an irresistible desire for closer security and defence cooperation, heightening the sense of shared purpose essential for greasing the negotiating machinery.
The Security and Defence Partnership sets up a new forum for dialogue that should boost cooperation on Ukraine, defence procurement - UK defence contractors will potentially be able to access the EU’s €150bn defence fund - the mobility of military material and personnel, space, cyber security and hybrid threats.
It signals to the US President - ahead of the NATO summit in The Hague next month - that Europeans are willing to assume more of the burden of defending the continent.
"All of this will reinforce the European contribution to NATO," said one senior EU official. "We are working closely with NATO on this. Having a good working relationship with the UK helps that on the road to the Hague Summit."
Irish sources suggest that Dublin is relaxed about this particular interpretation of the deal, given that the EU has similar security and defence arrangements with Norway, Japan and South Korea.
That said, much of what was announced today remains to be nailed down in detail and that speaks to a prevailing caution within Mr Starmer’s approach.
"The ambition was probably relatively low within Labour," said Paul McGrade, senior counsel with Lexington Communications, a public affairs consultancy. "They weren’t going to frighten the eurosceptic horses too much."
The EU official concurs.
"No red lines of the Labour manifesto were crossed," he said. "We’re not going back to freedom of movement or participating in the single market or customs union, but we are building on the existing agreements, ie, the Withdrawal Agreement, the [Trade and Cooperation Agreement] and the Windsor Framework, and adding a number of new areas of cooperation."
Mr Starmer had, since the election, carefully counterweighted the above red lines by signalling that Labour would be relaxed about "dynamic alignment", whereby the UK would be prepared to adopt and follow EU rules on food safety and animal health in order to reduce costly and cumbersome paperwork when importing EU food and exporting British produce to the rest of Europe.
There would also be a role for the European Court of Justice, if necessary, in arbitrating disputes over EU law, once they had first been assessed by a joint arbitration panel.
In reality, the agreement was done in relatively short time, given the months of shadow boxing after the Labour victory.
Mr Starmer met Commission president Ursula von der Leyen in October in Brussels. The only tangible result then was the announcement that a summit would take place in the first half of this year.
After that, Mr Starmer went back to talking about his red lines, and EU officials said they were waiting for the UK to make an offer.
"Both sides are on the starter blocks, but no one wants to start running first," an EU diplomat told me at the end of January. "The October meeting was about showing both sides were serious about the reset, but there were zero deliverables - except the idea of a summit. Nothing has happened since then."
The inauguration of Donald Trump certainly focused minds, especially when his administration’s casual hostility to European security was unveiled.
Yet, things actually got more complicated after France and other member states began insisting that a defence agreement would have to be tied to extending EU access to the UK’s fishing waters and a deal on youth mobility, an element which got nowhere in the Brexit trade agreement (TCA).
At the same time, Mr Starmer’s oft-repeated calls for greater access for UK business were at odds with his red lines over the single market and customs union.
This dynamic meant things were always going to get down to a last minute burst of intense negotiations.
As 27 EU ambassadors waited on standby last night, EU and UK officials continued talking until the early hours of the morning, with diplomats in Brussels complaining that London was over-egging the sense that a deal had been done.
"From the EU side the message is very clear," said one EU diplomat late yesterday afternoon. "We are looking forward to a successful summit, the so-called 'reset’ asked for by the Brits, but this has to be the start of a win-win partnership.
"There are many things on the table, the most visible one being the security and defense partnership. The whole discussion is a package, we will not accept elements that are only at the advantage/request of the UK without strong guarantees and commitments on other issues of importance for the EU, such as fisheries, energy, youth mobility, etc."
A key sticking point was fisheries, forever a toxic pressure point between Brexit Britain and the EU.
Under the TCA, EU fishing vessels got continued access to UK waters in a transition period running from 2021 to the middle of next year, when a new arrangement would have to be thrashed out.
As the reset talks intensified, Britain proposed that the current arrangements could be rolled over for another ten years.
France - along with Ireland, Belgium, the Netherlands and others - argued that that wasn’t enough and that the EU would lose any leverage at the end of that ten-year period when attempting to negotiate continued access.
As such, those countries argued that an SPS (sanitary and phytosanitary) agreement - which would be a big win for Mr Starmer - should be time limited and linked to the fisheries deal.
The UK then offered to extend the arrangements by another two years to 12 years, meaning the rendezvous would be 2038.
France and the others then dropped their objections.
It’s understood Friedrich Merz, the new German Chancellor, who is very keen on a security and defence agreement and who has been eager to make his mark, lobbied French President Emmanuel Macron to drop his objections during meetings in Kyiv, the weekend before last, and at the European Political Community (EPC) in Tirana, Albania, on Friday.
According to one diplomat, other things would likely be in play by the time the 2038 fisheries rendezvous came around that would provide the EU with leverage, while in the meantime the EU fishing industry would have a long period of stability.
However, the Irish Fish Producers Organisation was not impressed.
"The deal announced largely extends the unbalanced EU fishing quota and access arrangements for 12 years to June 2038," said Chief Executive Aodh O’Donnell.
"This is a hammer blow to our coastal communities. Ireland paid the highest price in 2020 in the TCA in that 40pc of the total value of quotas transferred to the UK was from Ireland.
"It seems clear that other EU coastal states such as France resisted giving up long-standing fishing rights and their governments have backed them. So, the Irish fishing industry feels that we have been sacrificed once again and our Government has failed to protect us."
The Taoiseach Micheál Martin said the certainty for fishermen enabled them to "make long-term and sustainable decisions".
Overall, the defence and security aspect of the reset is the most complete element, while many of the others are still to be negotiated.
For now the deal only commits both sides to "work towards" an EU-UK SPS area, one that would nonetheless cover "the vast majority of movements of animals, animal products, plants, and plant products between Great Britain and the European Union…without the certificates or controls that are currently required".
The joint text states that "the continued application of the Windsor Framework would provide for Northern Ireland maintaining its privileged unique dual access to both the European Union Single Market and the United Kingdom internal market".
One source close to the discussions paid tribute to Mr Starmer’s insistence on the importance of the Northern Ireland issue in forging an SPS agreement, with Ireland, Poland and other member states also urging the Commission to be creative.
"Starmer, over these past few days, but especially in the past 24 hours, had Northern Ireland front and centre," said the source. "We've not seen this kind of tangible interest in Northern Ireland [by a UK prime minister] since Tony Blair."
Irish officials say the commitment to a detailed SPS agreement is positive, not just for reducing friction on the Irish Sea border, but also facilitating the huge agrifood trade between Ireland and the UK.
One official points out that while an SPS agreement will massively reduce checks and controls, goods entering Northern Ireland from Britain will still face customs hurdles.
Ireland was also highly supportive of the commitment for the UK to return to the EU’s internal energy market, as it would restore a more efficient trading of electricity and renewable energy, and that both sides would seek to be aligned on a joint Emissions Trading System (ETS).
Both the above agreements - once finalised - will also require the UK to remain dynamically aligned with EU rules on energy and emissions, with a similar role for the ECJ as per the SPS agreement.
Getting these aspirational elements agreed will take time.
On SPS, both sides will have to carry out audits of where the UK has remained aligned with EU rules and where they have diverged.
"There are certain things that will have to be unpicked or resewn," said one source close to the negotiations. "But dynamic alignment is dynamic alignment."
It’s likely both audits will have to take place in parallel and will require some kind of timeline or roadmap. Both sides may also have to agree addendums to both the Brexit Withdrawal Agreement and the 2005 Constitution Act to allow the UK to become what Brexiteers pejoratively call a "rule taker".
Such fine print is being kept at bay by the UK government. Keir Starmer hailed the deal today as giving the UK "unprecedented" access to the EU single market for food and fisheries products (unprecedented, if you ignore Britain’s former membership of the EU).
He also pointed up the ability for UK tourists to use passport eGates to enter the EU without queuing, even though that has to be formally agreed and implemented by each member state (the joint statement talks of "the potential use of eGates where appropriate").
The Youth Mobility scheme has been rebranded a Youth Experience scheme and will, again, require further work.
Some observers believe the agreement was weighted in such a way as to give the Labour government some desperately needed fiscal credibility, with Mr Starmer hammering home that the SPS deal could mean an extra €10bn per year by 2040.
"I think there was an urgent, short-term imperative for the UK government to show their own fiscal watchdog that the global economic outlook wasn't as bleak," said Mr McGrade of Lexington Communications, "and therefore, please give us some better growth predictions in the autumn."
For industry, the apparent lack of ambition in the reset beyond SPS is disappointing.
Steffen Hoffmann, managing director of Bosch Ireland and UK, told RTÉ News that the biggest Brexit burden was not customs duties or regulatory divergence but red tape.
"Before Brexit we had about 50 import transactions per year," he said. "Now, we have 10,000. There's a process behind each of these transactions, there are documents that need to be filled out, a lot of administrative work. We have to create a whole department of people handling these things and that capacity we would prefer to use for innovation and R&D."
He acknowledged that the UK rejoining the EU customs union - what he calls a "first prize" option - remains a red line for Mr Starmer.
"We haven't quite understood why it has to be such a red line. So, today’s reset is a good development going forward. But does it justify the word 'ambitious'? I am not so sure."
