The Channel
connects.

Hearing what you wanted to. Diplomats sometimes express tricky points in emollient language, emphasise areas of agreement, or politely acknowledge positions they may not share. It is entirely possible to leave a meeting quietly pleased at how it went, while one’s counterpart is left bemused.

Misreading institutional posture. The EU’s appetite for closer cooperation with the UK varies by issue, and the signals come from different places. Senior institutional leaders and prominent MEPs may be openly positive; tougher stances emerge from less visible Council discussions, constraining the Commission, while unnamed diplomats criticise UK positions in the press. The reflex - to smile at the friendly face and blame France - may be cathartic, but it is ineffectual.

Reading the EU through the referendum. It necessarily flattened the EU into a binary question: something you were either for or against. Since then the EU’s policy frame has shifted on defence, competitiveness, economic security and migration, sometimes more than once. On other issues, such as AI, it has doubled down.

Membership-tinted spectacles. Inside the Union, there is give and take: concessions can be repaid later, files traded, and not every exchange has to balance on its own. Outside it, the arithmetic is less forgiving: concessions are more explicitly priced, and balance is measured differently. For those familiar with membership, it can be tempting to expect the old habits of accommodation – 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 is counterproductive.

Not knowing who the right people are, not knowing how or when to make the approach, or getting the tone of the meeting wrong.

Nobody British in the room. Without MEPs, or ministers and officials in the Council, when the EU discusses UK affairs there is often no one present with recent first-hand knowledge of the country. While the EU Delegation in London works to close this information gap, assumptions can sometimes circulate without a reality check.

Reading the press as policy. British newspapers are read in Brussels, but a headline is not a government position. Without the domestic context, what appears familiar is easily misjudged.

Reading clickbait as the country. There is always a social media post by one keyboard warrior, of whatever political stripe, to confirm one’s most deeply held suspicions about any country – including one’s own. Because Brussels does its business in English, the UK is a casualty of this more than most.

Making every meeting a démarche. Meetings at whatever level tend to be used to restate positions, sometimes to the exclusion of other useful discussions. 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 sometimes hastily paper over significant differences with constructive ambiguity. Each party then assumes the other signed up to more than it did, and the difficulties can take until the next summit to resolve.