Guide to the Brexit Negotiations

The Brexit process formally got underway in March 2017, as the United Kingdom sent the ‘Article 50’ withdrawal letter to the EU on the 29 March 2017, and the EU in turn drew up a draft of its Brexit negotiating guidelines.

In this blog Professor Steve Peers provides a detailed annotation of the text of the EU’s draft guidelines, and compares it to the UK position – which is most fully set out in Theresa May’s Lancaster House speech in January 2017.

The author argues that the most significant issue is actually that the EU and UK in principle have many negotiating objectives in common. Most notably, the EU has accepted the UK’s objective of aiming towards a comprehensive EU/UK free trade agreement (FTA) without provisions on the free movement of persons or contributions to the EU budget.

The devil will therefore be in the considerable detail.

• Primary Source

ESO: In Focus: Brexit - The United Kingdom and the European Union http://www.europeansources.info/record/brexit-the-united-kingdom-and-the-european-union/

United Kingdom: Department for Exiting the European Union: Legislating for the United Kingdom’s withdrawal from the European Union (Cm 9446 (March 2017) http://www.europeansources.info/record/legislating-for-the-united-kingdoms-withdrawal-from-the-european-union/

Blog: Open Europe, 31.03.17: The EU’s draft Brexit guidelines look anything but punitive http://openeurope.org.uk/today/blog/the-eus-draft-brexit-guidelines-look-anything-but-punitive/

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