The EU after Brexit—Hard or Soft?

The future of the EU is in question, and not just because of Brexit. Brexit is just one of the many crises that has hit the EU in recent years. The Eurozone crisis, the refugee crisis, and the on-going security crisis are equally problematic. But how Brexit occurs, whether very hard or some kind of ‘soft’, may have a significant impact on future European integration. At the same time, future integration—its form and content—will also have an impact on how the UK engages with the EU. This paper will consider the various options put forward on the UK’s future relations with the EU not so much to consider their potential effect on the EU but rather as a way in to considering how the EU may itself develop, and how this might impact the UK and its relations with the EU. The paper will therefore consider the various proposals for the EU’s future, including a ‘hard core’ Europe, a Europe of concentric circles, and a differentiated Europe in a range of different forms. It will argue that only by conceiving the future of the EU as differentiated—with a ‘soft’ rather than hard core constituted by different clusters of members in overlapping policy communities—is the UK likely to be able continue to have a productive relationship with the EU through some of its various policy communities, or the EU itself most likely to move forward. The paper focuses on key questions relating to the Single Market, free movement, and the Eurozone.