from the Centre for European Reform.

This is the CER podcast.

Hello and welcome to the CER podcast.

My name is Sophia Besh and I'm a research fellow here at the Centre for European Reform.

You're listening to an audio recording from a recent CER event.

If for some reason you can be there you can catch up now enjoy

ladies and gentlemen welcome to this event at rusey organized by the centre for european reform and the conrad adenauer

stifdom i'm going to moderate the first panel in a minute but just to say thank you very much

to felix dane and his colleagues at KAS for

supporting this project on plugging in the British. Thanks to also to Roozy for hosting today.

I think the subject is very important and hasn't received as enough attention in the British or

continental media. The day after the referendum,

I remember thinking, well, at least we'll have a very, very close security relationship post-Brexit,

because nobody voted to leave because they were against the common foreign security policy.

It's a no-brainer, it's obvious. There'll be lots of nasty arguments about economics and trade and customs,

but clearly we'll be really closely plugged in on

foreign defence policy and justice and affairs. Well, obviously, I was a bit naive. It's turned

that to be very difficult indeed. Partly because we think in some ways differently, the EU is a

rules-based legal order that cares understandably about its legal principles, while the British believe they're

a very pragmatic nation who can always find a way round legal principles. So it is proving quite

difficult to plug the British in, at least on the Justice and Affairs side, but we're also going

to talk about the foreign policy and defence sides as well. If we don't get this right, if there's not a

...