Baerbock’s visit to London: damage control will have to wait

Dhe German Foreign Minister wanted to take plenty of time on Friday for the first policy talks with her British colleague. Annalena Baerbock and James Cleverly met a month ago in Munster, where Baerbock was hosting the G-7 foreign ministers’ meeting. There, for two days, all the crises and conflicts in the world were on the conference table.

Well, when they first met in London, the focus should be on German-British issues, on Great Britain and the European Union and on joint action in the rest of the world. The whole thing was planned in a new framework – a “strategic dialogue” that became necessary after Britain left the European Union, since the British are no longer involved in the EU’s foreign policy formats.

But then on Friday the onset of winter with snowfall messed up the plans of the two foreign ministers. Baerbock had to wait hours for her plane to be de-iced at Dublin Airport, where she had previously visited to learn about the peace process in Northern Ireland.

In the evening, the meeting in London was finally canceled and Baerbock flew straight back to Berlin. She said she was “very saddened” by the decision she made with Cleverly. “But you can’t do anything about force majeure – and certainly not about unexpected ice and snow in Dublin.”

Hope for working compromises

It was good that Cleverly and she had been in a “very close and personally trusting exchange” in the past few months anyway, said the Foreign Minister. She announced that she would repeat her visit to the UK as soon as possible. Baerbock wanted to send a video message to the 72nd Königswinter conference between representatives of Germany and Great Britain in London. Actually, her participation was planned.

Damage control still dominated the agenda set by Cleverly and Baerbock before the winter weather thwarted their plans, six years after Britain’s decision to leave the EU. This applies to dealing with the so-called Northern Ireland Protocol, which provides for a variety of special rules for the north of Ireland, which on the one hand should remain in the EU internal market in order to avoid a customs border on the Irish island, but on the other hand belongs to the United Kingdom, which has left the EU.

While the German impression was that former Conservative Prime Ministers Boris Johnson and Liz Truss aimed to get rid of the protocol altogether or to make it obsolete by disregarding it, there is now hope that workable compromises can be found with the new British government. In any case, as the German side always makes clear, these rules would have to be negotiated between London and Brussels; British speculation that it might be possible to make more advantageous preliminary arrangements with Berlin is illusory.

An opportunity to expand cooperation

In his first foreign policy speech recently, British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak did not mention the strategic dialogue with Germany, but did announce some emphasis on “mature cooperation” with the states of the EU. The two fields he highlighted were “illegal migration” and “strategic vulnerabilities”. These, especially the threats from Russia and China, were also discussed at the Königswinter conference in London on Friday.

The British Foreign Office saw the meeting between Cleverly and Baerbock as an opportunity to “expand cooperation beyond the Brexit dispute”. There were also some hopes that Cleverly could develop a warmer relationship with Baerbock than was possible with Secretary of State Liz Truss. In London, people are closely observing how the German “Zeitenwende” is developing. The initial enthusiasm about the announced turning point in security policy areas, especially about the increase in defense spending, was followed by phases of disillusionment. In its Russia policy, the British government often sees itself closer to the countries of Northern and Eastern Europe, which call for a tough stance on Moscow, than to the governments in Berlin and Paris.

But the aftermath of Brexit continues to weigh on the relationship. The British government is currently not interested in giving prominent attention to the unresolved conflict over the Northern Ireland Protocol. Domestically, the government is focused on dealing with the economic crisis and difficulties in the National Health Service (NHS). Foreign policy also has other priorities. But the issue keeps coming back because the government in Washington is demanding a solution. However, the Foreign Office does not believe that the conflict will be settled in the next year.

There are no general elections until 2024 that could result in a Labor government. Labor leader Keir Starmer recently spoke out, as did Sunak, against re-entering the EU single market, but many believe he would conduct post-Brexit negotiations with Brussels in a more conciliatory manner. Some also hope that he could still open doors to Brussels after a change of government. After all, he had said that a rapprochement was not the right way “at this stage”.