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Comment by arlcode | Hacker News Reader

Switzerland and Norway negotiated special treaties to join Galileo.

The UK were in because of their EU membership. No one could have taken that from them besides they themselves.

And once you are out you get treated like any 3rd party state. If you want a special deal you better bring some time and be prepared to start fresh.

The desire "to get Brexit done" in a very tight timeframe, pushed by populist politicians, did not allow for that.

The whole deal of the EU is to make cooperation between countries easier and to act as a single voice.

The UK reaps what they sowed

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I hate these takes. If the goal of the EU is to make European cooperation. Why then was the attitude 'Britain wants to leave, fine fuck them'. Like just because they didn't want to be in the EU anymore, now the EU is no longer about cooperation? All of sudden the EU acted more like a geopolitical opponent of Britain.

The idea that there was not enough time to negotiate is nonsense. This was the EU punishing Britain for leaving, its as simple as that. If the EU was really about European cooperation, then they should have wanted Britain to stay in the project.

ESA existed before the EU and cooperation on space goes back way before the EU. It was short sighted politics with the goal to inflict punishment on Britain and make sure nobody else leaves.

The UK was trying to negotiate a special agreement/treaty regarding Galileo. But the EU did not want to even consider it. Indeed even today the UK has not really given up on trying to be friends with the EU and continues to remain open to rejoining Galileo and Horizon programmes. Bizarrely, the latter of which, the EU seemingly had a moment of weakness during the negotiations by agreeing that the UK could remain members of Horizon - but then later had a change of heart and decided to break the agreement (international law?) in choosing to cut the UK out to this very day.

The EU is waiting for Britain to abide by the current treaty they signed (Northern Ireland etc) before proceeding to new areas.

which it has every right to do, considering this treaty is especially important to one of its member states (ireland).

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