2018 - 04 April: CLEER Lecture by Andrea Ott on 'The Brexit conundrum: Stuck between Politics, EU and International Law'

This lecture addresses the current state of play of the Brexit negotiations and sheds a light on the future EU-UK trade relations. These negotiations are confronted with several challenges, among them the question how to reconcile the political red lines of both sides with the legal challenges arising from EU and international law.
The UK government turns out to be without a concrete plan since triggering Article 50 TEU procedure on 29 March 2017. Without even having discussed the future relationship, progress on the withdrawal agreement to organise the orderly withdrawal of the UK from the EU moves too slowly. It will at the same time predetermine the future content of the future bilateral agreement with key points agreed in December 2017 on finances, citizens, and Northern Ireland.
The British prime minister Theresa May has stressed so far in her political speeches since 2017 that the UK leaves the customs union, the single market, and the ECJ’s jurisdiction. And she expects that the EU makes the UK a creative offer for a future trade deal which is not copying existing closer cooperation in form of the European Economic Area extension of the internal market, the Canadian Free Trade Area or the Turkish customs union (“We will not accept the rights of Canada and the obligations of Norway”).