4/1/2017 Brexit: So What Now?

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Brexit: So What Now?

A few frequently asked questions

Yves Herman / Reuters

KRISHNADEV CALAMUR

MAR 29, 2017 | NEWS

What did the U.K. government do on March 29?

The U.K.’s envoy to the European Union hand-delivered a letter from Prime
Minister Theresa May to the office of the European Council president in Brussels,

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invoking Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty and formally beginning the process of talks
over the U.K.’s separation from the European Union—the process that’s come to be
known as Brexit.

How did we get here?

On June 23, 2016, Britons stunned Europe’s political establishment and voted 52
percent to 48 percent to leave the European Union. Prime Minister David
Cameron, who had supported the U.K.’s continued membership in the bloc and
who also wanted to give voters a voice on EU membership, resigned. After a brief
period of political backstabbing, which saw all the favored successors to Cameron
fail in their leadership bids, Theresa May, who had also supported remaining in the
EU, emerged as the U.K.’s new prime minister. She pledged to respect the wishes
of the public—dashing the expectations of those who’d hoped for a change of mind.
She said she’d invoke Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty, the mechanism by which
negotiations on the U.K.’s exit from the EU can begin, in March 2017. But while
British politicians and policymakers argued with their European counterparts on
what a future U.K.-EU relationship would look like, the U.K. High Court ruled last
November the government does not have the authority to invoke Article 50, saying
that authority lay with Parliament. The government appealed to the Supreme
Court, which agreed with the lower court’s ruling. After weeks of heated back-and-
forth in Parliament, lawmakers voted on March 13 to give the government the
authority to trigger Article 50. Three days later, the measure received royal assent
from Queen Elizabeth II. On March 29, May invoked Article 50.

Is the separation immediate?

No. Article 50 gives the U.K. and the EU two years to reach an agreement on what
Brexit will look like. The earliest we could have a deal is March 29, 2019, until
which the U.K. remains a full EU member but won’t participate in decision-
making.

But that two-year timeframe is seen as optimistic or, as the Financial Times puts it:
“It may prove fiendishly hard or simply impossible to complete it all.” One

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unnamed senior EU figure told the FT: “Two years is unfeasible. The more you
learn the more you bump into the complications and legal problems.” Indeed, the
Telegraph reports that members of the European Parliament, who must vote on any
final deal the EU reaches with the U.K., say that the U.K. must remain an EU
member until 2022. Philip Hammond, the former U.K. foreign secretary who is
now chancellor, warned last year that Brexit could take six years to complete.

As the BBC points out:

Unpicking 43 years of treaties and agreements covering thousands of

different subjects was never going to be a straightforward task. It is
further complicated by the fact that it has never been done before and
negotiators will, to some extent, be making it up as they go along. The
post-Brexit trade deal is likely to be the most complex part of the
negotiation because it needs the unanimous approval of more than 30
national and regional parliaments across Europe, some of whom may
want to hold referendums.

But Brexit has provisions in place for such an eventuality; the two-year schedule
can be extended by unanimous consent of the European Council.

What happens next?

The U.K. government will first repeal the European Communities Act of 1972, the
legislation that made accession to the EU possible, and then make EU law U.K. law.
This would make business operations seamless even after the U.K. leaves the EU,
but it would also allow U.K. lawmakers to repeal those aspects of EU law that they
consider onerous or irrelevant.

Then begin the talks themselves, which are likely to be complicated: At issue is not
only the future of EU-U.K. relations, but also the future of some 4 million people—

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3 million EU citizens and 1 million Britons—who live on either side of the English
Channel. Here’s how Linda Kinstler described it in The Atlantic:

Brexit negotiations will come in two phases: the first, which begins on
Wednesday, is a battle over what the divorce settlement between the
U.K. and EU will look like. The two most important issues in those
proceedings concern how much the U.K. will have to pay the EU upon
leaving—current estimates are around $60 billion, though Brexit
Secretary David Davis swore on Monday the sum would be “nothing like
that.” The other issue is securing the rights of EU citizens living in the
U.K., and U.K. citizens living in Europe. May has said she would like to
reach an early agreement to secure the reciprocal rights of EU and U.K.
citizens; arriving at such an agreement in the first few months of
negotiations could be an easy win for both sides. In the meantime, the
rights of EU citizens in the U.K. will indeed be used as “bargaining
chips” in Brexit negotiations. Many families have already begun
preparing to leave the country, fearing their loved ones may be denied
the right to live or work in a post-Brexit Britain.

Much of the discussions so far have centered on whether it’ll be a “soft” Brexit or a
“hard” Brexit. A “soft” Brexit would allow the U.K.’s relationship with the EU to
remain mostly unchanged: in other words, with the U.K. having access to the single
market, and with the free movement of EU citizens. A “hard” Brexit, on the other
hand, would see the U.K. negotiators refusing to compromise on the unrestricted
movement of EU citizens, thereby losing access to the single market. In reality,
since immigration is one of the reasons Brexit occurred, a final settlement is likely
to fall somewhere in between a “soft” and “hard” Brexit.

The EU will formally respond to May’s letter later this week by issuing draft
guidelines on negotiations for the other 27 member states. A Brexit summit is
scheduled for April 29, in which members will outline their negotiating positions.
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(Politico has a breakdown of what each of the 27 member states wants Brexit to
look like.) Seventy-two percent of member states, comprising 65 percent of their
populations, must agree on the eventual deal, which will then be ratified by
legislatures in each of the 27 states. (No one said this would be easy.)

As Alex Stubb, the former premier of Finland, told the FT: “The U.K.’s negotiating
hand is by definition weak. All the EU has to decide is the bill and the time of exit.
The rest is altruism.”

Will Brexit hurt the U.K. economy?

It’s too soon to tell. The worst prognostications of Brexit didn’t materialize. The
country is moving toward full employment and is growing more quickly than other
major industrialized nations, but inflation is high and the pound is about 15
percent lower against the U.S. dollar.

Is Brexit reversible?

Although a considerable minority in the U.K. would like to think so, it would be
political suicide in the U.K. to reconsider Brexit under the present political
circumstances. The major criticisms many Britons had with EU membership—
perceived loss of sovereignty and mass immigration from the bloc’s citizens—will
persist unless something there’s a fundamental change of heart within the EU’s
other 27 countries about what membership means to them. That won’t happen
overnight: Polls in most EU countries show that most citizens see membership as a
benefit. Practical considerations aside, May’s own remarks that “Brexit means
Brexit” suggest the U.K. government is unlikely to revoke a decision made by a
comfortable majority of its citizens. She reiterated those remarks Wednesday,
telling Parliament: “This is an historic moment from which there can be no turning
back.”

But never say never. John Kerr, the U.K. diplomat who wrote the text of Article 50,
which May triggered Wednesday, told the House of Lords last month: “If, having
looked into the abyss, we were to change our minds about withdrawal, we certainly

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could and no one in Brussels could stop us.” And Jean-Claude Juncker, the
president of the European Commission, said last month he hopes “the day will
come when the British re-enter the boat,” leaving open the possibility, however
slim, for those Britons who want to remain part of the EU.

What happens to the U.K.?

This could be one of the most contentious issues in the wake of the Brexit
announcement. The U.K., or United Kingdom, comprises England, Scotland,
Wales, and Northern Ireland. While England and Wales voted to leave the EU,
Scotland and Northern Ireland voted overwhelmingly to remain. Brexit affects
them, too. The Scottish government says it wants to secede from the U.K., calling
for talks with the U.K. government on an independence referendum sometime
between the fall of 2018 and the spring of 2019. The U.K. government says it
won’t negotiate. May had previously said “now is not the time” for a Scottish
referendum on independence. Scotland’s desired timetable for an independence
referendum would fall within the two-year period of negotiations between the U.K.
and the EU. A Scottish independence campaign run in parallel with the Brexit talks
would considerably weaken the U.K. government’s hand.

In her letter to Donald Tusk, the president of the European Council, May wrote:

From the start and throughout the discussions, we will negotiate as one
United Kingdom, taking due account of the specific interests of every
nation and region of the UK as we do so. When it comes to the return of
powers back to the United Kingdom, we will consult fully on which
powers should reside in Westminster and which should be devolved to
Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. But it is the expectation of the
Government that the outcome of this process will be a significant
increase in the decision-making power of each devolved administration.

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Then there is Northern Ireland. The Northern Irish border with the Republic of
Ireland is the U.K.’s only land border with the EU. Critics of Brexit say that open
borders between Northern Ireland and the Republic are a cornerstone of the 1998
Good Friday Agreement, and any deal that doesn’t take this into account would
imperil the peace deal. There have also been calls in Northern Ireland for a
referendum on leaving the U.K. and joining the Republic of Ireland—though the
prospect of that being successful are slim.

What  happens to the EU?

As I wrote nine months ago, soon after the Brexit vote:

There were fears that Britain’s exit would energize Euroskeptics across
the bloc. Indeed, polls in Denmark have suggested that the country
would vote to leave if a referendum were held on membership (none is
planned). Far-right parties across Europe rejoiced at the news from
Britain Friday. Marine Le Pen, the head of the National Front in France,
said on Twitter: “Victory for Freedom! As I have been asking for years,
we must now have the same referendum in France and EU countries.”
Similar sentiments were expressed by others across the bloc. Whether
that translates to referenda in those countries and subsequent votes to
leave is an unknown, however.

Since that time, however, the EU’s approval rating rose in its member states. Even
in Denmark, the percentage of people who supported a Brexit-style referendum
fell. Expected populist victories in elections across Europe have, at least for now,
stalled.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

KRISHNADEV CALAMUR is a senior editor at The Atlantic, where he oversees news coverage.
He is a former editor and reporter at NPR and the author of Murder in Mumbai.

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