The Shrinking of the European Union and Its Integration Potential

Abstract

Abstract: On January 31, 2020, the United Kingdom, a country with a population of 67 mln people and the fifth largest economy in the world, left the European Union. The case when a state ceased to be an EU member is the first in the history of European integration. Except for the episode with Greenland, which left the EEC in 1985, the group had invariably expanded before that. The currently available extensive body of literature on Brexit is mainly represented by works dedicated to Britain. Fewer works are devoted to the European Union; they mainly address institutional issues, such as the ratio of supranational and intergovernmental management methods and the pros and cons of differentiated integration. This article poses the problem more broadly. Its goal is to clarify how Brexit will affect the strategic potential of integration, not its forms. The author concludes that, although the European Union suffers significant economic, political, and conceptual losses, Brexit paradoxically imparts dynamism to the integration process. There emerge preconditions for the formation of two competing democratic regimes in Europe. The new situation draws a line under the 30-year (since the fall of the Berlin Wall) period of ideological and institutional domination of the EU as the only possible model of European development. Competition with Britain can be extremely useful for the European Union to rethink its attitudes, reject dogmas, and develop a new ideology of integration that would meet not the conditions of bipolar confrontation but the challenges of mature globalization.