28. Brexit

This chapter examines the legal issues raised by the controversial Brexit process. It discusses the legal requirements of the so-called divorce process outlined in Article 50 TEU (the voting franchise in the Brexit referendum of 2016, national legal requirements in the UK as regards Parliament, the possible withdrawal of the notification to leave);, the withdrawal agreement (including citizens’ rights, the post-Brexit transition period, dispute settlement, separation provisions and the ‘divorce bill’); as well as the future UK/EU relationship (encompassing a free trade agreement in goods and services, fisheries, cooperation on security issues and dispute settlement, including the rule of the CJEU).

Introduction

This book is about what it calls the “age of questions,” which began in the 1820s and 1830s as a result of three major developments: the expansion and politicization of press distribution; the enlargement of the voting franchise (in Britain); and a tight series of international events, including the Greek uprising in the Ottoman Empire (1821–1832) and the Belgian Revolution (1830–1839). The book examines how querists used a variety of questions to span contradictions, arguing that a question/problem arose out of a gap between a universal ideal and a particular reality. Seven distinct arguments regarding the essence of the age of questions are discussed: the national argument, the progressive argument, the argument about force, the federative argument, the argument about farce, the temporal argument, and the suspension-bridge argument. The book draws on certain pieces of evidence to support the divergent claims advanced by querists.