The Editors
The United Kingdom is due to leave the European Union on 29 of March 2019. On what terms it will do so, it is yet uncertain when less than three weeks are left before Brexit day.
On Tuesday next week, 12 March 2019, the UK Parliament will cast a vote on the new deal reached by Theresa May and the EU – ‘new’ because the parties re-open the negotiation talks after the UK Parliament had rejected the previous deal on 15 January 2019, inflicting a historic defeat to Theresa May.
On 12 March, the deal with the EU on the conditions for leaving the European Union may either be approved or rejected. If it is rejected, the conservative party has promised to the Parliament the opportunity to vote on whether to go ahead in just over three weeks’ time without any kind of negotiated deal; or whether to ask the EU to push back Brexit day in order to extend negotiations. In the latter case, it is not excluded that the UK will hold new elections, a new referendum, or even eventually halt the Brexit process. We dedicate this blog post to the European Court of Justice’s decision on whether the UK can withdraw the notification of the intention to leave given in March 2017.
The Wightman case originates from a request for a preliminary ruling made by the Court of Session – the Scottish Supreme Civil Court – to the European Court of Justice in October 2018. The case in front of the referring court concerned a petition for judicial review brought by some Members of the Scottish and the English Parliaments before the Scottish Court on the 19th December 2017. The referring Court asked the CJEU whether the notification to withdraw from the EU sent to the European Council by the UK government on the 29th March 2017 could be unilaterally revoked by the government itself before the expire of the 2 years period envisaged in article 50(3) TEU.
Continue reading “The Withdrawal of the Notification under Article 50, or How to Stop Brexit”