The curious tale of Julian, the last King of Brussels

“Julian King is the Security Union, and the Security Union is Julian King,” says Camino Mortera-Martinéz, a senior research fellow at the Centre for European Reform (CER). The syllogism means that King, as the first Security Union commissioner ever, has profoundly shaped his portfolio; it also means that, without Brexit and King’s surprise takeover, the Security Union’s portfolio would have never existed, and its multiple components would have been managed by several commissioners, rather than unified under King’s umbrella. “Without Brexit, the Security Union would have remained a nice sentence in official documents,” Mortera Martinéz says.