While those in favour of Brexit see the referendum as an event, for the UK Government, the European Commission, business and civil society, Brexit is very much a process. The rubric for the UK's departure process appears to be clear to the EU, which is of necessity a rules-based organization – how else could so many countries with different cultural and political legacies work together? For the UK, with its preferred operational mode of post-colonialism, the rules it agreed when joining the EU were always regarded as soft and optional, even when cases brought against it at the ECJ demonstrated otherwise. Whitehall's use of statecraft over 40 years, to hide the agreements the UK had made with the other members states, has made it hard to admit just how important EU membership has become to everyday life. In Squaring the Circle on Brexit: Could the Norway model work, Fossum and Graver describe this as a process of encoding and use this volume to alert the UK to the pitfalls of using any existing model of EU third country relationships to frame its own future.

Since the Brexit referendum, it has become clear that few understood the extent of this EU encoding within the British state. The UK Parliament is familiar with its constitutional role, with one Parliament not being fettered by any other but had not appreciated the fundamental differences of EU law, anchored in treaties, cumulative in structure and geological as well as genealogical in its strength. While successive Governments and their civil servants can be criticised for failing to fully report to Parliament the regular meetings, policies and legislative agreements made by the UK Government with the other member states, as Fossum and Graver point out, they were not alone in this practice. As a member of the EEA and EFTA and not a member of the EU, Norway is a rule taker rather than a rule maker and there is little domestic discussion about this. While rejecting membership of the EU, Norway has found that it has had to make many individual agreements to operate with its Scandinavian neighbours including a specific arrangement for its border with Sweden located in the Schengen agreement.

So, what other aspects of the Norway/EU working relationship might provide an ‘off the shelf’ model for the UK? This is a difficult assessment because any relationship depends on what kind of relationship the UK is seeking. So, there can be no answer to specific questions until a preferred relationship is defined and politically stable within the UK. Whatever this turns out to be, as Fossum and Graver remind us, the EU has clear rules for relationships with third countries and while there can be negotiations, there can be no agreement that undermines the internal relationships between existing member states.

There are also ironies in the Norway model that should not be lost on the UK. When the UK's bid to join the European Community was rebuffed by General de Gaulle, it founded the European Free Trade Association (EFTA) as a competitor to the EU, and it is EFTA that establishes the relationships between Iceland, Lichtenstein and Norway and the EU now. The UK left EFTA when it joined the EU in 1972, leaving it to fend for itself. So perhaps the UK returning to EFTA would be regarded as a second experience of European failure. However, it is the French that now remind the UK at regular intervals that it can remain in the EU with its current package of opt outs.

Through its membership of EFTA, Norway has incorporated three quarters of EU law into its own legislation. Outside this agreement lie membership of the Euro, the Customs Union, Common Agricultural Policy, foreign trade policy and taxation. However, to make the relationship work, Norway has over 130 individual agreements, which have accumulated over time. What might be attractive to Brexiteers is that EFTA is regarded as an intergovernmental agreement rather than a supranational one – although it includes cooperation on the four freedoms of the Single Market, which may be less attractive to those seeking a full break.

What can the UK learn from Norway? The executive approach to EU matters within the Norwegian Parliament will be familiar to those with detailed knowledge of EU implementation in the UK but this also comes with multiple methods of dispute resolution. Fusser and Graver point out that there are other more significant differences between Norway and the UK that might affect the basis of a comparison. Firstly, although Norway is a wealthy, energy-rich country, the UK has a much larger economy and has more global influence. For the UK, as an existing member or future partner of the EU there are operational and structural linkages between sectors that are supported by common regulation and financial systems. These support what are effectively internal supply chains. This interconnectedness relies on the predictability of knowledge of legislation and rule changes that are the basis of economic success and future investment. The Prime Minister's stated wish to be a rule follower, outside the EU and not in EFTA or the EEA, means this predictable anticipation and influence will be lost and there will be many pressures to increase the legal fissures between the UK and the EU without these certainties. This is not the case in Norway where the EU legislation simply passes into effect. Given that this depends on a depoliticised approach, Fusser and Graver conclude that the strongly politicised relationship that has emerged in the UK since the Brexit referendum would make Norway a difficult model to adopt without some specific political acceptance. This is an informative and thought-provoking book that demonstrates above all that any change in the UK EU relationship can never result in complete divorce, as the emerging structures are beginning to exemplify.