Re: Summer 2016 | Page 95

EU Referendum The British people are being asked to vote on whether the UK should remain a member of the European Union or leave and the campaigning has begun in earnest to secure your vote on 23rd June 2016, one way or the other. As a business we do not have formal view on the EU referendum. However, we fully appreciate that a decision to remain in or leave the EU could affect many of our readers either personally or in business. If the nation decides to remain, the EU will have to start delivering on the commitments it made in the draft deal with Prime Minister David Cameron back in February this year. If the country decides to leave, the Government will ask the EU to begin the Article 50 process of the Treaty on European Union – the only mechanism that exists for the exit of a member state. European Council negotiations will then follow between the other 27 member states and the European Commission, and then a vote of the European Parliament is called. Agreements would need to be sought on how to “unwind” previously negotiated rights and obligations whilst decisions will need to be taken on how the UK and the EU would interact in the future. These negotiations would need to be done within the two year period set out in the Treaty on the European Union, unless the remaining 27 member states agreed to give the UK an extension. This is unchartered territory for Europe as Article 50 has never been used by a member state before. Some commentators have suggested that an exit could take up to 10 years from beginning to end but this of course depends on how quickly the negotiations proceeded. The legal consequences of our exit could be far reaching. Subject to the terms of any new trading arrangements with the EU, EU treaties, directives, regulations and decisions of the European Court of Justice (ECJ) could cease to apply to the UK. Unless specifically preserved by UK law; the ECJ would no longer have jurisdiction at all over the UK. The UK would no longer have the right to participate in various EU agencies and the agencies that are UKbased such as the European Medicines Agency and the European Police College would more than likely move elsewhere in Europe. Whichever way you are swayed to vote there is no getting away from the fact that this is a monumental decision that the country will be making although it can sometimes be difficult to see what all the fuss is about on a personal level. We thought it would be a good idea to ask some Sussex based business leaders what their thoughts were on the EU question. Understandably some did not have a formal view that they wished to declare but our thanks go to those that were willing to put their heads above the parapet and shared their views. 93