The process for withdrawing from the European Union

[tebee]

UK government has now posted their policy paper about the process for withdrawing from the European Union if the No vote wins the referendum.


https://www.gov.uk/government/publicati ... pean-union

Direct link to current version

https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/s ... ssible.pdf

[Casa]

We already have a discussion thread running on the forum. Please post this there:
http://www.immigrationboards.com/commen ... 04591.html

[tebee]

Another policy paper

Alternatives to membership: possible models for the United Kingdom outside the European Union


https://www.gov.uk/government/publicati ... pean-union

current version

https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/s ... ssible.pdf

[Hamza2013]

Hi tebee,

Thanks for the information.

We know the process if UK exit EU and will take roughly 2 years to negotiate the changes.

My question is, if Uk remains part of EU how long will it take to implement the new EU deal laws? Will the new EU laws be presented to be agreed by law in EC?

[secret.simon]

This opinion is pure speculation and not meant to provoke any action.

if Uk remains part of EU how long will it take to implement the new EU deal laws?

There are already reports on these forums that Ireland is going glacially slow on applications for EU documentation by relatives of British citizens, thus making the SS route via Ireland harder.

Given that the deal was drafted in the political field in February, that would have given the civil servants in the European Commission and the Home office enough time to prepare the legal documents that need to be passed to implement the deal.

We know that there is a European Council meeting penciled in for 28-29th June, the Tuesday and Wednesday following the referendum. There are also rumours that the European Council, minus David Cameron, will meet informally on the Sunday before to take stock of the referendum.

The European Council is one of the two bodies that approves EU legislation, the other being the European Parliament. There are quite a few different procedures that need to be followed depending on the topic under question and I am not sure what category the Brexit deal would fall under. Here is a handy summary of various procedures.

On the assumption that Remain wins and the legal documents are ready to go, there is a good chance that the European Council will approve the legal documents implementing the deal in the Tuesday-Wednesday meeting. The action will then (assuming that it is the ordinary legislative procedure being followed) move to the European Parliament. I would presume that their processes (committee, plenary, etc) would take about a month, during which time the Home Office here could go super-slow on applications received for family members.

So, my guess is that the deal would be implemented in about a month after the referendum.

[secret.simon]

After the fun and games on the 23rd of this month, what could happen the morning after?

If the UK votes to Leave, does the Prime Minister have to trigger Brexit talks under Article 50? This analysis suggests that it is not a legal necessity, but a political one. As the article says "These conclusions are founded not on law, but on the interaction of the rules with the politics. That means they are not certain: the politics could always play in unexpected ways."

Another analysis on another blog looks at whether the UK can exit the EU overnight (well, they outline a plan for exiting the EU within one week), while completely short-circuiting the Article 50 process. That approach is purely legalistic and does not take into account the fury and sanctions that the UK will face from the EU by doing that. But, given that Article 50 is disadvantageous to the leaving country (the UK), in for a penny, in for a pound...

And lawyers are beavering away in Brussels to trigger Article 50, if the UK does not do so, as some Leave campaigners have suggested. Apparently, "options include stretching the meaning of a “notification” and potentially threatening to suspend Britain’s rights in the single market."

I also recommend this week's Economist (out now) for its take on Brexit. It may be worth buying it at the stand if it is not available in your local library. PS: I don't work for the Economist, or indeed any of the publications that I link to.

And finally, if you can't tell the European Union from the Council of Europe or the difference between the EEA, the EU and the Schengen Zone, here is a simple Euler diagram from Wikipedia that simplifies things.

[tebee]

The Economist has an apparently free briefing you can download from this page - http://www.economist.com/news/britain/2 ... xit-briefs