Dr Eleni Frantziou eleni.frantziou@durham.ac.uk
Associate Professor
Was Brexit a Form of Secession?
Frantziou, E.
Authors
Abstract
As a form of legal separation taking place within a quasi-federal framework, Brexit displayed important conceptual similarities with secession, in that it was predicated upon notions of collective identity and aspirations of renewed self-government. This article examines the interrelationship between Brexit, secession as a legal concept, and secessionism as a political phenomenon. It advances two main arguments: at a first stage, it highlights that while Brexit ideologically aligns with secessionism, it could not have met any sustained international law definition of secession itself. However, the constitutional constraint to the European Union's formal status as an association of states (Staatenverbund) as opposed to a federation (Staatsverband) has rendered its withdrawal provision (Article 50 of the Treaty on European Union (TEU)) unduly impervious to the important practical parallels between the Brexit process and decisional, that is, negotiated, forms of secession. The article goes on to argue that an active recognition of aspects of decisional secession within the EU constitutional framework could have allowed for a more complex and dialogical resolution of Brexit than the conditions set up by the unilateral withdrawal clause allowed.
Citation
Frantziou, E. (2022). Was Brexit a Form of Secession?. Global Policy, 13(S2), 69-78. https://doi.org/10.1111/1758-5899.13062
Journal Article Type | Article |
---|---|
Acceptance Date | May 7, 2021 |
Online Publication Date | Apr 29, 2022 |
Publication Date | 2022-04 |
Deposit Date | May 23, 2021 |
Publicly Available Date | Jun 28, 2022 |
Journal | Global Policy |
Print ISSN | 1758-5880 |
Electronic ISSN | 1758-5899 |
Publisher | Durham University |
Peer Reviewed | Peer Reviewed |
Volume | 13 |
Issue | S2 |
Pages | 69-78 |
DOI | https://doi.org/10.1111/1758-5899.13062 |
Public URL | https://durham-repository.worktribe.com/output/1274789 |
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Copyright Statement
This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited and is not used for commercial purposes.© 2022 The Authors.
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