Perhaps it was inevitable that the UK’s relationship with the European Union was going to be strained once The Sun famously ran a front page headline reading “Up Yours Delors” over the plans for monetary union and when relations between London and Brussels reached near breaking point towards the end of Thatcher’s time in office.
Now, as politicians and EU leaders have been paying tribute to the late Jacques Delors, a passionate advocate of post-war European integration and a founding father of the European Union’s single currency project, will 2024 see some member states question how the EU functions today or even their continued membership of the block?
Spanish Socialist prime minister Pedro Sánchez, for example, has admitted to liking the idea of the EU, but has had made it clear time and time again that it needs to be restructured, modernised and made more efficient.
External issues such as Ukraine and now Israel are beginning to create a division in opinions on how the EU should be reacting, while far-right parties have been gaining increasing support across the block - primarily on a tough anti-immigration ticket - but also questioning the EU’s ability to continue as a united body.
In the Netherlands, one of the founding members of what became the European Union, for example, there are calls for a “Nexit” referendum to leave the EU. There are similar moves in France and chatter along the same lines Italy, while in Spain, Vox would probably not take too much convincing to give such a move some serious consideration.
Back in 2021, the new Conference of the Future of Europe agreed it must “establish a Union fit for purpose” in a world increasingly driven by authoritarian and “big beast attitudes,” Guy Verhofstadt, the European Parliament’s chair for the conference, told its opening plenary session.
The big question is - Did anyone take any notice and what does the future of the EU hold over three years on from those comments?