英欧关系|《经济学人》：脱欧大局已确定，脱欧成本却待定

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我与我们的世界，既是一个“奋斗”的世界，也是一个“思考”的世界。奋而不思则罔，思而不奋则殆。这个世界，你大，它就大；你小，它就小。

欢迎通过上方公众号名称打开公众号“查看历史信息”来挖掘往期文章，因为，每期都能让你“走近”不一样的世界、带给你不一样的精彩。

本期导读：欧洲各国，特别是西欧诸国，在世界近现代史上所发挥的作用之强、所带来的影响之大，全球范围内的其他所有地区，都是无可与之比拟的。

自文艺复兴开始，欧洲文明就逐渐展现出越来越强的内生性生命力，并在之后的几百年间，在全球范围内遍地开花，并结出硕果累累，尽管时不时地也给人类家园带来了各种各样的灾难。

二战后的欧洲一体化进程，特别是欧盟的形成与发展，再一次为欧洲文明的未来前景点亮了导航之灯。

而2008年发生的全球金融危机，以及随后因之所起的政治动荡，特别是英国在去年公投决定脱欧，为欧洲的未来蒙上了一层浓重的阴影。

欧洲未来的航向究竟会如何，很大程度上取决于已于上周正式开启期限为两年的脱欧进程今后会如何进行。

欧洲文明，有着浓厚的妥协谈判历史底蕴，而这样的浓厚历史底蕴，在即将进行的脱欧谈判中，是否能再次发出光亮，为欧洲照明未来？

Britain and the European Union

英国与欧盟

The negotiator

谈判大师梅姨

As Brexit begins, Britain is due for a brutal encounter with reality. Time to be honest about the trade-offs ahead

随着脱欧进程正式开启，英国注定会遭遇一场残酷战，是时候诚实面对各种权衡利弊了。

NINE tumultuous months after Britons voted to leave the European Union, the real Brexit process is at last under way. Theresa May’s dispatch of a letter to the European Council on March 29th, invoking Article 50 of the EU treaty, marked the point at which Britain’s withdrawal from the union became all but inevitable. For half the country’s population this was a moment to celebrate; for the other half, including this newspaper, it marked a bleak day. The future of both camps—and of the EU itself—now depends on what Mrs May does next.

英国民众投票决定退出欧盟后至今的九个月，是纷乱嘈杂的九个月，现在，脱欧进程终于要真正开始了。3月29日，梅姨向欧盟理事会递交信函，正式启动欧盟条约第50条，标志着英国退出欧盟已势不可挡。对英国的半数民众来说，这是一个值得庆祝的时刻，但对另一半英国民众来说，包括本杂志社，这一刻，却是晦暗的。两派阵营的未来，以及欧盟自己的未来，现在都取决于梅姨下一步将要采取的动作。

The negotiations are sure to be difficult. Time is short, since Article 50 comes with a two-year deadline. The task of unwinding Britain’s membership of the club is fearsomely complex. Neither side is well prepared. In Britain, where Brexit increasingly resembles a faith-based initiative, voters have been given wildly unrealistic expectations of the Utopia ahead. Their first contact with the reality of losing preferential access to their main market will be traumatic. Unless Mrs May can persuade the Brexiteers on her own side that they must accept concessions, Britain may end up flouncing out of Europe without any deal at all.

各项谈判肯定不会容易。时间尤为紧迫，因为第50条规定的期限为两年。解除英国的欧盟成员身份这项任务，其复杂之程度有点吓人。双方都还没做好充分准备。在英国，脱欧这件事儿，越来越像是基于信仰的一项倡议，关于未来，选民们获得的全是些极不具有现实性且乌托邦色彩非常浓重的期望。英国民众首先遭遇的痛感，将是失去欧盟这个重要市场的特惠待遇。除非梅姨能劝说她自己阵营里的脱欧派接受妥协，否则，英国最终可能完全断绝与欧盟市场的联系，达不成任何贸易协议。

Cruising for a bruising

向激战前进

The timetable is tighter even than it looks. The sides may spend weeks arguing over process. The EU wants to fix the terms of the Article 50 divorce, covering such matters as the rights of citizens resident in other countries and Britain’s multi-billion-euro exit bill, before starting work on a future trade deal; Mrs May wants to negotiate on everything at once. Nothing much will be agreed on before the German election in September. At the end of it all, ratifying the deal will take six months. That leaves little more than a year for the talks themselves.

时间表比看起来更为紧迫。英欧双方可能会在谈判程序的确定上就花费数周时间。欧盟想在敲定涵盖英欧双方非居民权益以及英国数百亿欧元分手费等议题的第50条“离婚”安排后，再着手就未来贸易协议进行谈判。 而梅姨则想所有问题同步进行。今年九月德国选举之前，达成不了任何共识。所有谈判结束后，对相关安排进行批准也需要六个月的时间。这样算下来，谈判可用的时间还不到一年。

Mrs May’s priority is to fulfil the Leave campaign’s promise to “take back control” by ending the free movement of EU citizens to Britain and the jurisdiction of the European Court of Justice(ECJ). She has acknowledged that this means leaving the EU’s single market. But leaving would be a mistake. Even if it takes control of immigration, Britain will not be able to cut the numbers much without damaging the economy, as ministers are slowly realising. And the government is wrong to claim that there exists some relationship with the single market that has all the benefits of membership with none of the costs.

梅姨最重要的任务，就是通过禁止欧盟居民自由出入英国并结束欧洲法院在英国的司法管辖权来兑现脱欧派“夺回掌控权”的承诺。梅姨曾表示过，这就意味着要离开欧盟单一市场。但是，离开欧盟单一市场将是一个错误的选择。即使英国夺回了移民的控制权，英国也不能在很大程度上降低移民数量的同时不给英国经济带来伤害，英国政府各部长正逐渐认识到这一点。英国政府声称，可与欧盟单一市场寻求某种特定的关系，只享受它的好处而不付出任何成本，这无异于痴人说梦。

It is true that many Britons backed Brexit because they wanted to cut immigration and regain sovereignty, but they did not vote to make themselves poorer—as Mrs May’s “hard Brexit” will. Her government has been characterised by U-turns and her letter this week was more emollient than some of her earlier statements. Even so, in thrall to Brexiteering backbenchers and the Eurosceptic press, she is unlikely to change course now.

很多英国民众之所以支持脱欧，主要是因为向减少移民、重获国家主权权益，这确实没错儿，但他们选择脱欧，却不是为了让自己变得更穷破，而梅姨若来个“硬脱欧”，则会带来那样的恶果。梅姨内阁一直以来都善于来个一百八十度大转弯，而本周她递交给欧盟的脱欧信函，比之前她所做的历次声明，来得都要温和些。即使这样，梅姨也不大可能会改变方向，因为梅姨已深深陷于脱欧派与疑欧派的操控之中。

Mrs May is not just making the wrong choices, but also downplaying awkward trade-offs. By promising barrier-free access to the single market while stopping EU migrants and ending the ECJ’s jurisdiction, she is still telling Britons they can have their cake and eat it. Although she concedes that exporters to the EU will have to obey EU rules, the more Mrs May insists on controlling EU migration and escaping the ECJ, the less barrier-free will be Britain’s overall access to the single market. This is not just because free movement of people is a condition for the EU, nor because it will be hard to secure tariff-free access for trade in goods, something both sides can readily agree on. It is because the biggest obstacles swept away by the single market are not tariffs or customs checks, but non-tariff barriers such as standards, regulations and state-aid rules. Unless Britain accepts these, which implies a role for the system’s referee, the ECJ, it cannot operate freely in the single market—as even American firms trading in the EU have found.

梅姨不仅做着错误的选择，而且也轻视着所面临的不利境地。梅姨曾向英国民众承诺，要让英国畅享欧盟单一市场，而同时阻止欧盟移民并结束欧洲法院的管辖权，到现在梅姨依然对英国民众声称，蛋糕会到我们的手中，也会进入我们的口中。尽管梅姨坦诚，英国出口商要进入欧盟，就要遵守欧盟的法规，但梅姨越是坚持控制欧盟移民、越是逃离欧洲法院的管辖，英国对欧盟单一市场的畅享就越是渺茫。这不是因为，人员自由流动是欧盟的核心要件，而且也不是因为实现货物自由贸易本身就是件很难的事儿，而且英欧双方也都还没展现出相关意愿，而是因为，进入欧盟单一市场的最大障碍，不在于关税或海关查验，而在于诸如标准、规制、国家补助规则等非关税壁垒。除非英国接受这些，这也就意味着接受了欧盟体制的裁判者欧洲法院的管辖权，否则英国不可能在欧盟单一市场畅行无阻，这一点，即使在欧盟进行贸易的美国公司，也早已认识到了。

Boxed into a corner

被逼进了死胡同

The most dangerous of Mrs May’s illusions has been her claim that no deal is better than a bad deal. Her letter this week steps back from this notion, but only a pace. To revert to trading with the EU only on World Trade Organisation (WTO) terms would cause serious harm to Britain’s economy. It would mean the EU imposing tariffs plus a full panoply of non-tariff barriers on almost half Britain’s exports. No big country trades with the EU only on WTO terms. An acrimonious break-up would make it harder to co-operate in such areas as foreign policy and defence. And it would surely increase the risk of Brexit triggering Scotland’s exit from the United Kingdom.

梅姨给英国民众所画的“大饼”中，最危险的一点在于，她曾声称，达成不利于英国的协议，还不如达不成协议。本周梅姨向欧盟递交的信函所展现的态度，已有所软化，不过软化的程度，仅低了一度。把英国与欧盟的贸易只限于通过世贸组织来进行，将给英国经济带来严重伤害。那样的话，就意味着，欧盟可对英国近半数出口课征关税，还能采取五花八门的系列非关税壁垒措施。所有与欧盟进行贸易的大国，都不只通过世贸组织来进行。英欧彻底离婚，也将让外交和防务领域的合作更为困难。而且，英国脱离欧盟无疑也将提高苏格兰脱离英国风险。

Mrs May needs not merely to soften her tone, as she has started to do this week,48 31680 48 15288 0 0 2971 0 0:00:10 0:00:05 0:00:05 2972an> but to lower expectations. Instead of threatening to undercut her European partners by building an unregulated Singapore-on-Thames (something that, despite its appeal to free-traders, would horrify most Brexit voters), or hinting that Britain might co-operate less fully on security, or claiming that the EU needs Britain more than the other way round, she should accept that in these negotiations she holds the weaker hand. She should hence be more flexible over payments into the EU budget, a subject her letter skates over.

梅姨不仅需要降低强硬音调，正如本周已开始做的那样，而且也需要降低未来期望。梅姨不能威胁要把英国建成“泰晤士河上的新加坡”（这对自由贸易者来说很具有吸引力，但对大多脱欧支持者来说无异于噩梦）甩开欧洲的伙伴们，也不能恫言要减少在安全领域的合作，更不能佯称欧盟对英国的需要多于英国对欧盟的需要，梅姨要接受现实，认识到在脱欧系列谈判中处于劣势地位，因此梅姨需要在欧盟预算的付款安排中展现更大弹性，而关于这个问题，梅姨在递交给欧盟的信函中却只有寥寥几句一笔带过。

Because negotiating a full free-trade deal is certain to take more than two years—no country has concluded one with the EU in so short a time—she should accept another consequence: that transitional arrangements will be needed to avoid “falling off a cliff” in March 2019. Her letter talks airily of “implementation periods”, but does not acknowledge how hard these may be to sort out. A proper, time-limited transition might mean prolonging free movement of people and the rule of the ECJ, but that price would be worth paying for a better Brexit.

要进行一份全面的自贸协议谈判，耗时一般都超过两年，没有任何国家与欧盟能在如此短的两年之内达成一份全面的自贸协议。而梅姨要认识到，达成系列过渡性安排将可避免英国经济在2019年三月份发生“断崖式下跌”。梅姨向欧盟递交的信函，对各种政策安排的“实施期限”进行了蜻蜓点水式的描述，却没认识到具体落实到位所需要的付出有多大、难度有多高。达成一项合适的且具有特定期限的过渡期可能意味着，人员自由流动的期限以及接受欧洲法院管辖权的期限也都将相应延长，不过，为了英国脱欧成本更低，这个成本值得付出。

The softer tone of Mrs May’s letter might, with luck, encourage her EU partners to be more accommodating. So far they have reacted to threats from London in kind, talking up the exit bill, insisting that Britain ends up being worse off outside the club than inside and digging in over terms for co-operating in foreign and security policies. There is a possibility of a deal between Britain and the EU that minimises Brexit’s harm. Unfortunately, in a negotiation against the clock where both sides start so far apart, there is also a big risk of one that maximises harm instead.

梅姨在递交给欧盟的信函中，若她立场更软些的话，如果足够幸运说不定还能让欧方变得更随和些、更易通融。到目前为止，英方发出的讯息，与威胁没什么两样，而欧方也开始有所反应，大谈脱欧费用，坚称离开欧盟对英国来说会更坏，同时也开始利用外交和安全问题来说事儿。英欧之间达成协议让脱欧成本最小化的可能是存在的，不幸的是，谈判日程安排如此紧张，谈判双方态度如此迥异，也存在很大的风险，英欧双方达成一项让脱欧成本最大化的协议。

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