The crass remarks made by Michel Barnier, the EU’s chief Brexit negotiator, in his speech to the Berlin Security Conference yesterday, illustrate the damage being done to Europe’s long-term cohesion as Brexit unfolds, as well as the wider challenges to the future of UK-Europe security and defence cooperation.

This is why the EU is tackling people smugglers and pirates, rather than liberating Raqqa and Mosul

With agreement over the divorce bill seemingly imminent, Barnier’s task was simple enough. Instead, he started his speech – on the future of European security after Brexit – by expressing shock that Britain voted to leave the EU “after a series of attacks on European soil”, and months after France had called for solidarity against Islamic State.

“Rather than stay shoulder to shoulder with the union,” said Barnier, “the British chose to be on their own again.” This was a disingenuous and dishonourable line of attack. While I have little sympathy for the cack-handed manner in which this government has pursued negotiations with the EU, this framing of security as all or nothing – with us, or “on their own” – is a dangerous and counterproductive tactic.

The UK was at the forefront of the fight against Isis and other terrorist groups, long before the attacks in Paris in November 2015. Within weeks of those atrocities, the British government set out its case for expanding airstrikes into Syria, winning a vote in parliament the next month. Since then, other European nations have played important supporting roles, with Germany and Poland sending reconnaissance aircraft, for instance. But over two years on, perhaps Barnier should reflect on the fact that the UK is one of only three European states – among 28 EU members – currently conducting airstrikes as part of the coalition against Isis’s sham caliphate.

“It is for us, Europeans, to maintain this stability and promote our values around the world,” declared Barnier. Let’s fact-check this. The Netherlands abandoned the offensive air campaign in June 2016 – though it plans to resume strikes in January – and Denmark dropped out six months later. Today only the UK, France, and Belgium remain, with Belgium deploying around a half-dozen combat aircraft and the UK and France around 14 apiece. According to data compiled by Airwars, the UK has conducted a higher proportion of allied airstrikes than any nation, besides the US. It has also provided more than 1,400 military personnel to the coalition. These figures belie Barnier’s misguided effort to call into question the UK’s solidarity.

Yet Barnier’s dismissive attitude reflected a deeper problem, which was his glib assumption that Europe could maintain “strategic autonomy”, with the UK relegated to an ad hoc supporting role. The UK would be a country of no more significance than two dozen other partners. “Norway,” he drily noted, “is one of the countries with which we cooperate closely.” The small problem with this is that the UK accounts for a quarter of the EU’s overall defence spending, whereas Norway makes up less than 3%. The comparison is facile.

Perhaps all this is a necessary corrective to the delusion that the UK can have its cake and eat it. But Barnier veered to the other extreme, at times seeming to revel in the worst case. “The UK will no longer be involved in decision-making, nor in planning our defence and security instruments,” he announced. But it’s not as simple as that. The EU is obliged to take account of the interests and concerns of non-EU Nato allies (ie the UK, from March 2019), and to hold “intensive” consultations with them, when it considers how to respond in a crisis. More importantly, the minute the EU drew on Nato assets under the so-called Berlin Plus arrangements, the UK would have the right not only to participate in any operation, but also play a role in “planning and preparation”.

None of this seems to bother Barnier. Why? Because the EU is making an “unprecedented effort” towards a defence union, and the UK contributes “barely 5%” of personnel to EU-led military operations. These missions, stretching from Bosnia to Somalia, are valuable initiatives that go largely unnoticed by European publics. But they are limited in scope. Barnier’s speech praised the 1998 Saint-Malo declaration, a pioneering Anglo-French agreement that set out an ambitious agenda for EU military capability. But Lord Peter Ricketts, a drafter of Saint-Malo and later the UK’s first national security adviser, recently noted that these ambitions “were never fulfilled”. This is why the EU is tackling people smugglers and pirates, rather than liberating Raqqa and Mosul.

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On paper, Brexit does not hurt Nato or the UK’s bilateral ties to key partners, such as France or Poland. In practice, Brexit – as a decision, and as a process – has unleashed a bitter cocktail of nationalism, resentment and mistrust that already seems to be corroding what Barnier rightly called our “common destiny”.

British politicians bear much responsibility for this – perhaps the lion’s share. But some have also sought to rise to the challenge, proposing constructive ways to insulate security cooperation from the maelstrom. William Hague, for instance, has suggested that the UK might continue to play a role in the EU’s political and security committee. Barnier’s gratuitous remarks on terrorism do little to foster trust or goodwill, on an issue where both sides share the goal of an ambitious partnership.

• Shashank Joshi is a senior research fellow at the Royal United Services Institute