Strategic advisory on UKEU-EUUK political, regulatory and institutional relations
The Channel connects.
I help businesses and organisations read the relationship between the UK and the EU – and act on it.
Since Brexit, the relationship has been under near-continuous negotiation. The latest phase, the Government’s reset, seeks to reduce trade barriers just as a wider shift towards economic security and industrial preference threatens to create new ones. Brussels is responding to US trade restrictions and concerns about Chinese overcapacity, in part through its Made in Europe agenda. The UK faces the same pressures but must also navigate the EU’s response. Those shared pressures might be expected to bring the two sides closer; yet, as the UK’s recent experience with SAFE has shown, closer strategic ties do not automatically translate into wider industrial access.
The relationship will get closer or more distant, plausibly both at once. It will not stay the same. For businesses, that will affect market access, supply chains and compliance costs. The value is in seeing it early enough to act.
I spent the last twelve years working on UK-EU affairs in Parliament, seven of them as the House of Commons’ National Parliament Representative to the EU. That role put me at the institutional junction of Westminster, Whitehall and Brussels, with a wide view of the relationship and the forces shaping it.
From that vantage point one problem kept recurring. London and Brussels often misread one another. Sometimes information is missing, or diplomacy leaves things unsaid. More often it is structural: politics, institutions and incentives look different from the other side of the Channel.
That gap can be expensive. I help clients close it by working out where a file is heading, putting technical work in its political context, or getting an issue onto the agenda.
Get in touch with the file, issue or question you have in mind.
Treating ‘the EU’ as one actor. Its decisions emerge from institutions, interests and shifting majorities. Incentives vary by issue and by who is deciding.
Treating issues as purely technical. Ten years after the referendum the Council still runs a dedicated Working Party on the UK – something it does not do for the US or China alone. So even a technical UK file usually gets a political reading from the member states’ counsellors, whatever the subject.
Hearing what you wanted to. Diplomats sometimes wrap difficult points in emollient language or acknowledge a position without accepting it. If you do not know how to read the signals, you can leave a meeting pleased while your counterpart leaves bemused. I have seen it happen.
Misreading institutional posture. The EU’s appetite for closer cooperation with the UK varies by issue and institution. Senior leaders and MEPs may be openly positive; tougher stances emerge from less visible Council discussions, while unnamed diplomats criticise UK positions in the press. Without a clear read across the institutions, and a route through them, you cannot act effectively.
Reading the EU through the referendum. It necessarily flattened the EU into a binary question. Since then the EU has changed course on some issues - most visibly, on defence and migration - while on others, such as artificial intelligence, it has doubled down on existing approaches.
Membership-tinted spectacles. Inside the Union, there is give and take: concessions can be repaid later, not every exchange has to balance on its own. Outside it, the arithmetic is less forgiving. For those familiar with membership, it can be tempting to expect the old dynamics – and wrong-foot oneself.
Arguments that don’t travel. Cases made purely from self-interest travel poorly. That is not an argument for hiding your interests - the EU is not shy about expressing its own - but asking for exemptions from geopolitically driven policies without a grasp of the underlying issues can be counterproductive.
Getting the approach wrong. Not knowing who the right people are, how or when to make the approach, or what tone to strike.
How EU→UK work goes wrong
Treating London as one actor. Number 10, the Treasury, the departments and Parliament often hold different views.
Expecting the UK to work like the EU. Brussels is fluent in the inter-institutional, process-heavy politics of a multinational Union, and the absence of familiar ways of working in Westminster can easily be mistaken for a lack of seriousness.
Nobody British in the room. Without British MEPs, ministers or officials in the Council, the EU often discusses UK affairs with no one present who has recent first-hand knowledge of the country, so assumptions can circulate without a reality check.
Reading the press as policy. British newspapers are read online in Brussels, but without the domestic context, headlines and op-eds are sometimes taken for government policy. Because Brussels does its business in English, the UK can be a casualty of this more than most.
Making every meeting a démarche. Meetings are sometimes used to restate positions to the exclusion of other useful conversations. Seen from Brussels, this reads as diplomatic cohesiveness and discipline.
Overreading Brexit. Assuming every UK move relates to the EU, or that the reset - or every opinion poll - means the UK wishes to rejoin.
Mismatched expectations, on both sides. Under pressure to have something to announce, summits often rely on constructive ambiguity to bridge differences. Each party then assumes the other signed up to more than it did, and the difficulties can take until the next summit to resolve.
Look closely and the same failure recurs: reading the other system through the assumptions of your own, and misjudging its incentives and how its decisions are made.
Without a clear read of the other system, making even a strong case can feel like trying to make water run uphill.
Service overview
How I can help
One strategic read across Brussels and London.
I offer a standing assessment of the relationship, a focused view of your file or issue, and help navigating and engaging with the institutions that shape it.
Twelve years of reading UK-EU politics through the process that carries it, seven of them in Brussels. Pointed at your file.
Outlook
A retainer for organisations with a live stake in the relationship that need a senior view spanning London and Brussels.
1.The read.A regular strategic read of where the relationship is heading: the reset, Europe’s industrial turn, implementation issues, changing access and the politics that could move any of it. Informed by the conversations and processes shaping the relationship, I compare signals across London and Brussels to assess where positions are shifting, what constrains them and where there is room to act. I test those judgements against outcomes.
Updates will cover developments and dynamics across the core UK-EU agenda, such as youth experience, ETS linkage, electricity trading and an SPS agreement; regulatory cooperation; and major Made in Europe files, e.g. the IAA and Public Procurement Act.
2.Track.A highly focused, private read on one agreed file or issue: where it is heading, who is shaping it and what it means for you. Naming it directs what I follow and test in greater depth.
A deeper Track might focus on a particular aspect of the core agenda above, or a file in areas such as EU customs reform; defence-industrial cooperation; economic security and industrial policy, e.g. steel, CBAM, critical raw materials or investment screening; EU simplification, e.g. digital and AI, sustainability or industrial rules; the Savings and Investments Union or 28th regime; or an issue of your choosing.
3.Contact.A regular conversation, and contact when something matters or when you need a view.
Projects
Bounded, bespoke work around a specific question, decision or objective.
Typical projects include:
▸Agenda.UK→EU Putting a new issue on the agenda in Brussels. I can help shape the case and lead you to the right institutional channel.
▸Engage.UK→EU How to engage effectively in Brussels on a live file. I can map the route, inform your approach, and support the engagement from start to finish.
▸Scenario.A deep dive on a single question: where the issue is heading, the plausible outcomes, and what each would mean for your strategy.
▸Sherpa.Scoping the political and institutional dynamics around a difficult issue – for example before or after a summit, or as a sensitive issue emerges.
▸Embed.I can work alongside your team or existing advisers, adding a UK-EU institutional layer to an existing workstream.
The Channel separates. Twenty-one miles at its narrowest, it is one reason the two political systems developed as differently as they did.
The Channel connects. Trade, regulation, politics, people and information cross it constantly. The UK is the EU’s second-largest trading partner (goods and services combined) and the EU is the UK’s largest.
Brexit raised the stakes, turning the Short Straits into a customs and regulatory border between the UK and the EU. What happens on one shore still has consequences on the other.
The name. Shakespeare’s Suffolk demanded to be ferried “safely cross the Channel” in the 1590s; a generation later the French were calling it la manche – the sleeve, worn by an arm of the Atlantic. A nautical metaphor that shares the British eye for good tailoring.
The method. The geography endures, the fish are none the wiser, but the rules and politics keep changing – and something is always lost in the crossing. Neither shore offers a complete view: each system has to be understood on its own terms, and as it is seen from the other.
One sea, named differently from each shore: international relations in a name.
About
Kilian Bourke
Kilian Bourke founded La Manche Advisory in September 2026 after twelve years working on UK-EU affairs in Parliament. Before that he worked for Andrew Duff, then MEP for the East of England.
In Parliament he began with scrutiny of EU Single Market legislation for two cross-party committees: the Commons European Scrutiny Committee, chaired by Sir William Cash, and the Lords EU Internal Market Sub-Committee, chaired by Lord Whitty. He also chaired a Brexit Trade Network across both Houses.
He then spent seven years in Brussels as the House of Commons’ National Parliament Representative to the EU, from the end of the Withdrawal Agreement negotiations through the TCA, the Windsor Framework and the reset now under way.
In that role, he engaged regularly with the EU institutions, the UK Mission and Europe’s national parliaments, and supported Commons Select Committees and delegations in scrutiny and inter-parliamentary diplomacy. He also helped establish the UKEU-EUUK Parliamentary Partnership Assembly and supported its first two UK co-chairs, Sir Oliver Heald and Marsha de Cordova.
Born in Dublin and raised in Northern Ireland, he studied at Cambridge and now lives in London. Often on the Eurostar.
