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.
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