Brexit: What is going on?

For those of you who don’t know, Brexit or the United Kingdom (UK) leaving the EU was a controversial event in 2016. While Brexit had been a topic of discussion for a while not many actually believed that it would happen. Most believed like its predecessor and namesake Grexit, or Greece leaving the EU, it would fail. But after the vote on June 23 2016, Brexit began (Barnets, 2016).  Don’t worry if you were unaware of what this process meant, since many Brits didn’t either.  In fact the most searched thing in the UK after the results of the vote was “What is Brexit?” and the second most searched was “What is the EU?”.  Many of them didn’t even know what they were voting for and what being the first country to leave the EU would mean.  

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/azeem-ibrahim/a-hard-brexit-will-take-t_b_12353706.html

The EU, or the European Union, is an economic and political union that consists of 28 European countries. It was created after World War II it had several names before it became the EU including the European Coal and Steel Community and the  European Economic Community(EEC). The EEC, the name right before it became the EU, was made up of six countries, Belgium, Germany, France, Italy, Luxembourg, and the Netherlands ’s purpose was to create more economic cooperation between the countries and. The EEC was changed to the EU in 1993. One of the main ideas behind the EU was the countries that trade with each other become codependent on each other and would, therefore, be more invested in avoiding conflict, so that another war won’t divide Europe like WWII (From 6 to 28 members, n.d.).

While the EU started out as just an economic entity, it has since transformed into a political entity as well. The EU now has policies on everything from the environment to health to migration. The European Union is run by a representative democracy, which has several levels of operation (The EU in brief, n.d.). In the past half-century, the EU has delivered peace, prosperity, and stability. The Union has allowed easier travel and work for its citizens all over Europe.

https://www.ft.com/content/8710df70-d49d-11e5-8887-98e7feb46f27

Brexit was a movement lead by Britain’s Conservative Party. The face of the campaign was a politician named Boris Johnson who has held the position of Mayor of London since 2008. The polling for Brexit officially occurred Thursday, June 23rd, of 2016 and the results that the United Kingdom was going to leave the EU were officially presented on June 24th. The vote to leave the EU is done on a country by country basis, so the United Kingdom’s version of that was voting on the 23rd. But the procedure of leaving the EU follows a set of guidelines, and it is a longer process. To preface, Article 50 is the clause in the Lisbon Treaty that talks about how a country can voluntarily leave the bloc (EU) and the steps that must be taken to do so. Britain is the first country to leave the EU by means of Article 50, and there are a few main steps to complete the process after the initial vote to leave (Article 50, 2017).

After a lot of back on forth, on the 29th of March, 2017 Brussels finally received the official notification that Article 50 had been invoked. This gives the United Kingdom a deadline of two years to negotiate a new relationship with the EU. A month later, on April 29th, the remaining 27 countries of the EU met to talk about Brexit and its effects on the EU. The step that the United Kingdom is currently in the making of deals on topics such as migration and trade policies. As these deals are drawn, they will be presented to the other 27 countries still in the EU for a vote. For the draft deals to be accepted, they must receive approval from at least 20 countries that have at least 65% of the population of the EU. If these draft deals are approved, then the next step is ratification by the European Parliament. If a final settlement is agreed upon, then the UK will no longer be apart of the EU and will no longer enjoy the same trade deals with over 20 countries that currently exists with the European Union. But if a settlement cannot be made within the strict two years time frame, then an extension of the deadline can be agreed upon both the UK and the EU, but the agreement must be unanimous. If this doesn’t happen, the UK will leave the EU and there will be no agreement between the United Kingdom and the European Union. It would most likely revert to the WTO (World Trade Organization) trade laws, but that situation is also messy so a new set of rules would have to be negotiated (Hunt & Wheeler, 2017).

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The referendum to leave the EU was brought forward by David Cameron, a previous Prime Minister of the UK. Similar to many other Prime Ministers in the past, Cameron was faced with the pressure of the ongoing conflict between the UK parliament and the EU, the same conflict that eventually sparked the retaliation movement known as Brexit. As a result of continuous pressure from the Conservative Party, the UK’s right wing, and various other anti-EU groups, Cameron put forward the referendum. Many other politicians, including Cameron himself, believed that Brexit wouldn’t gain any traction or have any influence, but were surprised by how many citizens of the United Kingdom did not want to stay apart of the European Union.

A main contributing factor toward Brexit was immigration.  The UK had experienced a consistent flow of immigrants for a long time that wasn’t a point of concern. But immigration into the UK underwent a massive influx that the UK’s market and the economy wasn’t ready for when the various conflicts, mainly the Syrian conflict, in the middle east began to dramatically escalate. As a result, massive numbers of immigrants from countries that were not apart of the EU began pouring into the United Kingdom (The Politics of Anger, 2016). This led to resentment towards the fact that the-the EU has free movement of people, meaning that if a refugee was able to get into Greece, they could easily make their way up to England. Many British citizens had seen immigrants coming into the United Kingdom and believed that the immigrants would work for less money and would take jobs from British people. This prompted a negative feeling for many Brit’s towards not only the refugees themselves but the system that let these refugees into the UK.

Another factor that lead to the Brexit vote going through was that many used it as a protest vote. Quite a few people that voted for Brexit were protesting the low standards of living that existed in the UK particularly in the north, the belief that immigrants were taking jobs, and the loose border controls that allowed refugees in that some believed could be terrorists into the UK, along with many other issues.

http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2017/03/are-the-brits-bonkers-to-brexit.html

One last, and arguably most interesting, factor behind Brexit told from the firsthand experiences of a citizen of the UK was that many people were misinformed about Brexit overall. The campaign for Brexit was very effective at stimulating the underlying resentment for the EU that existed across the UK. One of the arguments that Nigel Farage, a voice in favor of Brexit, used constantly was that the regular fees that were paid to the EU were wasteful and unnecessary. Another argument was that the EU was too bureaucratic altogether. The Brexiteers have even been accused of lying by claiming that the UK would save as much as 350 million pounds a week if they didn’t pay the fees to the EU, funds that could have been put to much better use within the UK. The point is, that many of the people voting were voting based on one issue that was tweaked to resonate with them. They weren’t looking at the whole consequence of what would happen if the UK were to leave the EU, they weren’t fully informed.

Brexit is a very important topic to not only the EU, but also to the world. The EU is one of the biggest economic forces in the world and helps to stabilize the world market and helps stabilize exchange rates. We should care about Brexit because the UK was one of the biggest and important members of the EU both fiscally and politically. The EU has absorbed the largest amount immigrants and refugees. Because of EU laws, countries cannot act upon immigrants and refugees within their borders, for under EU laws once someone is in the EU they can freely travel. But with the UK now out of the EU they no longer have to abide by these laws and able to pass immigration laws that could limit non-UK citizens’ rights and ability to travel freely to the UK.

Sources

Article 50. (n.d.). Retrieved September 19, 2017, from Analysis of Development Co-operation website: http://www.lisbon-treaty.org/wcm/the-lisbon-treaty/treaty-on-European-union-and-comments/title-6-final-provisions/137-article-50.html
Barnets, N. (2016, August 3). From Grexit to Brexit: Greeks in Britain. Deutsche Welle. Retrieved from http://www.dw.com/en/from-grexit-to-brexit-greeks-in-britain/a-19445928

Dearden, L. (2016, September 25). Anger over 'Bregret' as Leave voters say they thought UK would stay in EU. Independent. Retrieved from http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/brexit-anger-bregret-leave-voters-protest-vote-thought-uk-stay-in-eu-remain-win-a7102516.html
The EU in brief. (n.d.). Retrieved September 16, 2017, from European Union website: https://europa.eu/european-union/about-eu/eu-in-brief_en
From 6 to 28 members. (n.d.). Retrieved September 16, 2017, from European Commission website: https://ec.europa.eu/neighbourhood-enlargement/policy/from-6-to-28-members_en

Hunt, A. & Wheeler, B. (2017, September 21). Brexit: All you need to know about the UK leaving the EU. BBC News. Retrieved from http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-32810887
Liberalism after Brexit The politics of anger.  (2016, July 2). The Economist. Retrieved from https://www.economist.com/news/leaders/21701478-triumph-brexit-campaign-warning-liberal-international-order-politics?frsc=dg%7Ce
Milne, R. & Spiegel, P. (2016, February 25). Brexit: Fraying union. Financial Times. Retrieved from https://www.ft.com/content/8710df70-d49d-11e5-8887-98e7feb46f27

St. John, A. (2016). Brexit [Drawing]. Retrieved from http://s3.thingpic.com/images/oz/FuSf3Vnt3RgnUG4e7fqmkBJ3.jpeg
Steps to the UK Leaving the European Union [Diagram]. (2017). Retrieved from https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/624/cpsprodpb/1473D/production/_97337738_599db9c1-ec10-4334-a9cd-be7c27a3e363.png

Taylor, J. (2016). Pro-Brexit demonstrators gather outside the Houses of Parliament [Photograph]. Retrieved from http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2017/03/are-the-brits-bonkers-to-brexit.html