Bulletin n. 1/2017
June 2017
INDICE
  • Section A) The theory and practise of the federal states and multi-level systems of government
  • Section B) Global governance and international organizations
  • Section C) Regional integration processes
  • Section D) Federalism as a political idea
    • Duff Andrew
    Article 50: How to Leave the European Union
    in Federalist Debate (The) , Year XXIX, Number 3, November 2016 ,  2016
    Most people will have never read a single article of the Treaty on European Union (TEU) before they stumbled recently across Article 50. Alas, those ‘most people’ seems to include many British lawyers and politicians whose acquaintance with the constitution of the European Union has been hitherto remote. So here is my guide to Article 50. The need to include a secession clause in the draft Constitutional Treaty (2003) and then the Treaty of Lisbon (2007) was upheld both by the federalists and by their opponents. Federalists saw the need to have a safety clause in the new treaty that would allow a let-out for any current member state which fought shy of accepting the leap forward in European integration that was at that time hoped for. Some, including the Germans, worried that the decision to allow competences to be returned to member states (now Article 48(2) TEU) postulated a future less-integrated Union from which it would be necessary to escape. The UK government, aware of the risky nature of its ever-increasing exceptionalism, wanted a clause that would prevent its abrupt expulsion as an awkward member state by the mainstream majority. The President of the Convention, Valéry Giscard d’Estaing himself added in the two-year timetable in which the secession agreement would have to be completed. That said, none of us in the Convention ever expected the provision actually to be used – which might explain its relatively sketchy character. So it is vital to analyse very carefully what the clause says, why it says it, and how it is to be deployed now that the UK voted on 23 June 2016 to leave the Union.
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