5. Brexit

2021 ◽  
pp. 100-120
Author(s):  
Anne Dennett

This chapter discusses UK membership of the European Union and the Brexit process. On 1 January 1973, the UK became a member of the European Economic Community, and the UK Parliament passed the European Communities Act 1972, allowing directly applicable European laws to take effect as part of UK domestic law which had an impact on parliamentary sovereignty. In the 2016 Brexit referendum, a narrow majority of the public voted in favour of leaving the European Union and the European Union (Withdrawal) Act 2018 repealed the European Communities Act 1972 on exit day when the UK left the European Union. Brexit has made significant changes to the UK constitution including the creation of a new body of retained EU law in UK domestic law, an impact on devolution, and raising the question of whether it has been a sufficient constitutional moment to trigger a codified UK constitution.

Author(s):  
Ian Loveland

This chapter examines the way in which the UK’s membership in the European Economic Community (EEC) prompted changes in the domestic constitutional order. The discussions include the founding principles of the Treaty of Rome; the accession of the UK into the EEC; EEC law, parliamentary sovereignty, and the UK courts; and the horizontal and vertical effects of directives. The chapter explores the controversies engendered by the Maastricht, Amsterdam, and Lisbon Treaties; and concludes by assessing whether continued EC membership will entail a loss of the UK’s ‘sovereignty’ to a federal European constitution and a rebalancing of power within the constitution between Parliament and the courts.


2016 ◽  
Vol 17 (S1) ◽  
pp. 51-62 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ralf Michaels

Philip Jessup would not be pleased. Exactly sixty years after he published his groundbreaking book onTransnational Law, a majority of voters in the United Kingdom decided they wanted none of that. By voting for the UK to leave the European Union, they rejected what may well be called the biggest and most promising project of transnational law. Indeed, the European Union (including its predecessor, the European Economic Community), is nearly as old Jessup's book. Both are products of the same time. That invites speculation that goes beyond the immediate effects of Brexit: Is the time of transnational law over? Or can transnational law be renewed and revived?


Author(s):  
E. V. Khakhalkina

The UK European Union membership referendum 2016 and its results actualized the study of the British initiatives in the sphere of integration before the entry into the European Economic Community in 1973. The article is devoted to the little-known in Russian historiography "Grand Design"of H. Macmillan, nominated in the wake of the failure of the Suez operation against Egypt in 1956. Plan with such bright and eye-catching name suggested the creation of a broad integration group in Europe as alternative with Britain as a leader to the preparing for the establishment of projects of the European Economic Community and the European Atomic energy community. The project was designed to restore the prestige of the Conservative Party and to strengthen the shaky position of Britain in NATO and European affairs after Suez Crisis. At the same time the emergence of the plan reflected the desire of the Prime Minister, Harold Macmillan to weaken the struggle inside political establishment between supporters and opponents of the country's full-fledged participation in the European integration and take the lead in the integration movement from France. Analysis of the content of the project and attempts to implement it within the framework of a Free Trade Area (FTA) reveals the essence of the "special position" of the UK towards supranational integration and the British vision of the future of European integration. Modern United Kingdom appeared in the new European realities after the Referendum on the country’s membership in the European Union and returns to the starting point on the path of supranational integration and to the search for its place in Europe. In these circumstances, the ideas expressed by British politicians more than half a century ago, may again prove to be demanded and relevant.


Author(s):  
K. Gylka

The European Union (EU) is an economic and political union of 28 European countries. The population is 508 million people, 24 official and working languages and about 150 regional and minority languages. The origins of the European Union come from the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC) and the European Economic Community (EEC), consisting of six states in 1951 - Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, Luxembourg and the Netherlands. These countries came together to put an end to the wars that devastated the European continent, and they agreed to share control over the natural resources needed for war (coal and steel). The founding members of ECSC have determined that this European project will not only be developed in order to share resources or to prevent various conflicts in the region. Thus, the Rome Treaty of 1957 created the European Economic Community (EEC), which strengthened the political and economic relations between the six founding states. The relevance of the topic stems from their desire of peoples and countries to live better. The purpose of the study is to identify the internal and external development mechanisms of European countries and, on this basis, to formulate a model of economic, legislative and social development for individual countries. The results of the study provide a practical guideline for determining the vector of the direction of efforts of political, economic, legislative, humanitarian, etc.


2021 ◽  
Vol 47 (2) ◽  
pp. 49-64
Author(s):  
Stuart Ward

J. G. A. Pocock’s magnum opus, The Machiavellian Moment, seems an unlikely contender as an intimation of Brexit. Published in 1975, his study of the revival of classical Republicanism in Renaissance Italy and the struggle to uphold a universal ideal of active citizenship could not be further removed from Britain’s departure from the European Union forty-five years later. But the wider production context suggests that it might be worth probing the possible connections. This article examines Pocock’s protracted reckoning with Britain’s entry into the European Economic Community in the early 1970s amid the ruptures of empire’s end. It seeks to tease out the existential underpinnings not only of the latter-day exigencies of leaving but also of the persistent habit of harnessing that ambition to a reimagining of Britain’s global coordinates.


2021 ◽  
pp. 3-40
Author(s):  
Robert Schütze

This chapter surveys the historical evolution of the European Union in four sections. Section 1 starts with the humble origins of the Union: the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC), which was set up by the 1951 Treaty of Paris. While limited in its scope, the ECSC introduced a supranational idea that was to become the trademark of the European Economic Community (EEC). Section 2 focuses the EEC, while Section 3 investigates the development of the (old) European Union founded through the Treaty of Maastricht. Finally, Section 4 reviews the reform efforts leading to the Lisbon Treaty, and analyses the structure of the—substantively—new European Union as it exists today. Concentrating on the constitutional evolution of the European Union, the chapter does not present its geographic development.


Public Law ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 355-396
Author(s):  
Mark Elliott ◽  
Robert Thomas

This chapter focuses on the constitutional implications of the UK’s membership of the European Union and the constitutional implications of its exit from the EU (or ‘Brexit’). The chapter examines how EU law was accommodated within the UK legal system during the period of the UK’s membership of the EU, and in particular considers the consequences of the primacy of EU law for the doctrine of parliamentary sovereignty. The chapter also considers the extent to which lessons learned about the UK constitution as a result of EU membership will remain relevant now that the UK has left the EU.


Author(s):  
Doina Gavrilov

For a few decades, Europe watches Turkey evolution in a matter of politics, policy, policies, human rights and so on. Everything begins in 1959 when Turkey applies to associate membership to the European Economic Community. But unfortunately for Turkey, the accession to the Community was not to accomplish. In time, the European Economic Community became the European Union. The organization pass through the enlargement process multiple times that today it is the Union of the 28 countries, but still without Turkey as a member. After all this time, a question is raised: what drags Turkey from achieving the membership status in all this time? In this paper, we try to answer the above question through the Europeanization spectrum.


2011 ◽  
Vol 6 (4) ◽  
pp. 871-884
Author(s):  
Branislav Radeljić

This paper examines the situation in the European Union where the growing presence of Muslim communities has already taken place. The initial understanding of the then European Economic Community as Christian Democratic, thus as Catholic, is no longer valid. In fact, from a social constructivist perspective, the presence of Muslims has posed a challenge and led to numerous debates relating to what has been promoted as European identity. Accordingly, this qualitative paper focuses on the coexistence of the two identities and questions to what extent young, EU-born, Muslims are ready to accept European identity, or, by contrast, continue to cultivate their own Muslim identity. The paper argues that the young Muslims can be divided into three different groups – traditionalists, neo-traditionalists and liberals, a division that is easily ignored by the society and, more importantly, policy makers, who consider only the first category when portraying Islam as a serious challenge to European identity. Conclusively, the paper notes that bigger efforts are needed on behalf of both the Europeans and the Muslims, efforts that will lead to successful co-existence and validate the EU’s cosmopolitan approach towards its otherness.


Author(s):  
Robert Schütze

The creation of a common market was (and is) a central task of the European Economic Community and today the European Union. The 1957 EEC Treaty thereby offered a variety of legal instruments to unite the different national markets into a ‘common’ European market. Originally, it closely followed the GATT suggestions in Article XXIV and outlawed customs duties (and equivalent measures), while it equally prohibited quantitative restrictions (and equivalent measures). The EEC Treaty also contained a non-discrimination provision for imported goods, yet the latter was textually confined to fiscal measures; and the question therefore arose how the 1957 Rome Treaty would regard State regulatory measures that discriminated against out-of-State goods. This chapter explores the constitutional choices made by the original Rome Treaty and the early Court with regard to market integration.


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