Hedging its bets? Portugal’s diplomatic strategies for a post-Brexit Europe

ABSTRACT

The United Kingdom’s withdrawal from the European Union has deeply impacted politics in the continent. While affecting all European countries, the strategic challenges raised by Brexit have been particularly acute for smaller EU members due to their vulnerability and greater dependence on the Union. This article explores the diplomatic strategies smaller EU member states have pursued to meet the challenges stemming from Brexit. Drawing on the theoretical literature on small states it focuses on the case of Portugal, an under-researched country, which, as a core EU member sharing a historical alliance with Britain, is significantly exposed to the effects of Brexit. In an empirically grounded way, the analysis shows that Portugal has been hedging its bets to balance a steady EU commitment with the protection of relevant links with the UK. Like other smaller EU countries, the new context of increased uncertainty led to the adoption of more proactive and sophisticated diplomatic strategies. The study provides evidence of the novel political dynamics in Europe spurred by Brexit and highlights the importance of international institutions, such as the EU, for small countries. These results contribute to the literature on contemporary Portuguese foreign policy and small European states’ diplomacy.

KEYWORDS:

• Portugal
• European Union
• United Kingdom
• Brexit
• small states
• foreign policy

Acknowledgements

The authors wish to acknowledge comments received on earlier versions of this article at the Instituto Português de Relações Internacionais, Lisbon, May 2019; ‘Europe as a Global Actor’ International Conference, Lisbon May 2019; UACES Annual Conference, Lisbon, September 2019. The authors would also like to thank two anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments. This work was supported by the Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (FCT); under Grant UIDB/CPO/00758/2020; and under Grant SFRH/BPD/99579/2014.

Notes

1 Official numbers say that around 235,000 Portuguese were living in Britain in 2016, but estimates raise that number to 500,000, making it one of the biggest foreign communities in the country.

2 British visitors represented more than 20 per cent of Portugal’s total visitors in 2015, with tourism accounting for around 10 per cent of the Portugal’s GDP. In that same year, more than 17,000 British nationals were officially reported to be living in Portugal, with other accounts putting that figure at around 40,000.

3 Portugal has had a significant trade surplus with the UK, whose market accounted for about 10 per cent of Portugal's total exports (fourth destination, after Spain, France and Germany) and close to 5 per cent of its imports (fifth supplier) of goods and services in 2015. That same year more than 2,600 Portuguese companies operated in the British market.

4 All quotations in this paper originating from non-English sources are the authors’ own translation.

5 The topic was on the agenda of official visits made to the UK by two Portuguese junior ministers in July 2016, and by the Portuguese Minister of Foreign Affairs, in February 2017.

6 Portugal is part of the informal group of seven southern EU countries, the so-called ‘Med 7’, which since September 2016 has been holding regular summits to exchange views and coordinate their positions on different issues of the EU agenda.

7 The election of Mário Centeno, Portugal’s finance minister, as President of the Eurogroup in December 2017 can be interpreted as a recognition of Lisbon’s bridging role in eurozone discussions, striving for a balance of ‘discipline’ and ‘solidarity’.

8 In sharp contrast, Lisbon favoured a swift implementation of the joint declaration to increase EU–NATO cooperation, signed in Warsaw in July 2016 (see Ministério dos Negócios Estrangeiros, 2017, pp. 250–253).

9 Beyond visits and other contacts by Portugal’s Minister of Foreign Affairs, the Portuguese President was received in Downing Street and Buckingham Palace in November 2016.

10 This point was further clarified during an interview with a Portuguese senior diplomat (Lisbon, September 2019).

11 Those contacts included official visits made by the Minister of Foreign Affairs from 2017 onwards.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (FCT); under grant UIDB/CPO/00758/2020; and under grant SFRH/BPD/99579/2014.