Should we take our time informing the EU of our intention to leave?
EUROPEAN Commission president Jean-Claude Juncker has called for Brexit negotiations to start immediately. He claims there’s no need to wait until a new Prime Minister is chosen and that as Britain has decided it wants to leave the EU, it doesn’t make any sense to wait until October to negotiate terms of departure. Perhaps he should read the Treaty of Lisbon, Article 50, which states that a member state which decides to withdraw from the Union shall notify the European Council of its intention. Until receipt of that notification, the withdrawing member state continues to be a full member of the EU and will adhere to all EU laws and practices. The UK EU referendum is an internal process without any legal obligations or timescales on its acceptance or implementation. Until the UK Government chooses to act on the referendum and to inform the European Council formally of an intent to withdraw from the Union, it continues to be a full and active member state. Whatever Juncker thinks or wants, he can’t control when the withdrawal notification is submitted or prevent the UK Government preparing its strategy for withdrawal negotiations before submitting
notification however long it takes. Juncker’s attitude in trying to bully the UK to rush withdrawal is typical of the unelected EU presidents ignoring the best interests of member states in pursuit of Union goals. We will decide when we wish to notify the European Council of our withdrawal, when we are ready. The UK will then start the negotiations necessary to free ourselves from 40 years of EU bullying.
JOHN MARTIN, Swarthmoor, Cumbria. MY FatHeR, then aged 18, was training to be an accountant, but joined the army in 1938. He did so, as he told me, because he knew war was inevitable and Chamberlain had done the country an immense service by buying a year’s grace with his famous ‘piece of paper’. By falling on his sword, our present Prime Minister has also done the country a great service. He has sidestepped the pressure the non-elected presidents of europe wish to impose and bought us time to get our house in order before commencing formal negotiations. He deserves our thanks and respect, and although i’m a Brexiter, he has mine.
PETER SEALEY, Coldingham, Berwicks. THE observation often being made by Brexit commentators, almost as an aside, is that nothing will change very quickly. It seems any action on the main topics that worry the ordinary Brexit voter is years away. This isn’t ‘taking back control’ in the way the Leave campaign portrayed it. My concern is that the Cotswold-Islington axis will drag out every aspect of the negotiations for as long as possible — even ‘decades’ are being mentioned — to frustrate the purpose and spirit of the outcome of the referendum which, let’s face it, centred particularly on immigration. Now that David Cameron has resigned, is it too much to expect that the Conservative Party appoints a leader who fully believes in the overwhelming urgency the message of the referendum conveys? Surely the Westminster village won’t continue to regard the people’s wishes as inconvenient and ignore them. And let’s not forget that we owe this successful campaign almost entirely to the years of relentless singled-minded effort by Nigel Farage. He was denied a seat in Parliament by a shameless election campaign centred on telling just enough lies about reforms in Europe to sway a few extra voters to vote Tory in Thanet. Not to include Farage in any working party at the centre of negotiations would be unacceptable.
PETER EDWARDS, Southampton.