Skip to main content

Research Repository

Advanced Search

Was Brexit a Form of Secession?

Frantziou, E.

Was Brexit a Form of Secession? Thumbnail


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

Files

Published Journal Article (166 Kb)
PDF

Publisher Licence URL
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/

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.





You might also like



Downloadable Citations