EU Referendum questions: The process of leaving the EU
Cambridge Centre for European Legal Studies (CELS) Podcast
Faculty of Law, University of Cambridge
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🗓️ 31 May 2016
⏱️ 6 minutes
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Summary
In this ongoing series of short interviews, academics from the University of Cambridge shed light on the key issues to be considered in the run up to the upcoming referendum on the UK's membership of the European Union.
This recording features Professor Kenneth Armstrong, Professor of European Law and Director of the Centre for European Legal Studies (CELS), considering how the legal mechanism governing Britain's exit from the EU might function in the event of a 'leave' vote in the referendum on 23rd June, and what the impact might be on Britain, and the other EU countries.
This series has been created by the Centre for European Legal Studies (CELS). For more information visit http://www.cels.law.cam.ac.uk/
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | I'm here today with Professor Kenneth Armstrong, who is the Director of the Centre for European Legal Studies here in Cambridge, |
| 0:14.0 | and we're going to be talking today about the process of potentially leaving the European Union following a referendum vote to leave in June. So could you start |
| 0:22.3 | by saying a little bit about the nuts and bolts of the process of leaving? Well, for the first time, |
| 0:26.6 | we have an actual provision in the EU treaties that says what should happen when a member state |
| 0:33.7 | wants to withdraw. And that's known as Article 50 of the Treaty on European Union. |
| 0:38.3 | And it sets down the process for an orderly exit, if you like, from the European Union. |
| 0:44.9 | And what does that look like? What are the essential steps in that orderly process of leaving? |
| 0:50.7 | The first step in the process is that the state that wants to withdraw has to has to notify the |
| 0:56.5 | heads of state and government of the other member states and that wouldn't necessarily be |
| 1:01.1 | automatic from a referendum the referendum could take place and there's nothing that then |
| 1:06.1 | automatically triggers Article 50 however the Prime Minister has made clear that in the event of a vote to leave the European Union, |
| 1:14.6 | then very quickly the request would be made to the European Council to indicate that the UK was intended to withdraw. |
| 1:21.6 | After that point, there will then be a period of negotiation and discussion that is supposed to take place within |
| 1:30.3 | a two-year window for an agreement to be reached between the United Kingdom and the other 27 member states. |
| 1:38.3 | And if that agreement is reached and comes into force, then the UK will withdraw. |
| 1:42.3 | If that agreement isn't reached, there's a |
| 1:46.0 | possibility for extending negotiations if everybody wants to, but in the event that there is no |
| 1:52.0 | deal done, then the UK would simply withdraw from the European Union without a deal. |
| 1:56.0 | Right, and what would that mean for the UK? |
| 1:59.0 | For the UK, it would be treated within the European Union like any other state that was not a member, |
| 2:05.6 | therefore it wouldn't have the same access to the European single market, for example. |
| 2:11.6 | At some point then, the United Kingdom might try and we go see some other type of agreement and arrangement. |
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