From the Center for European Reform, this is the CER podcast.

Hello and welcome to another episode of the CER podcast.

My name is Sophia Besh.

I'm a researcher here at the Center for European Reform.

And today I'm talking to Agatha Gislinska Jakubovska,

who's also a research fellow here at the CER.

And she's actually our CER expert on EU institutions. And so I wanted to talk to her

about the role of the institutions in Brexit negotiations. And this is a very timely conversation,

because today, on Monday, the UK and the EU's team are gearing up for the second negotiation session.

Agatha, could you explain why the UK is negotiating with the Commission rather than with the 27 heads of state or government? The short

answer to your question is that the British delegation is negotiating with the Commission,

mainly because the Commission is EU's main negotiator.

But of course, it wasn't that self-evident in the aftermath of the referendum

when Member States and the Commission entered into political and legal squabbles over who should be in charge of those negotiations.

This is mainly because Article 50 is not perfectly clear on this.

Article 50 is talking about the EU negotiator, but is not sort of referring to the European Commission. But at the end of the day, member states recognized

that the European Commission would be best suited

to run the exit talks.

And in December 2016, they welcomed the appointment

of Michel Barnier, who is the lead negotiator, and also

recognized that simply the European Commission has better resources, has better expertise.

After all, it conducted both accession talks and numerous international negotiations.

...