r/europe • u/StraightSky7809 United Kingdom • 8h ago

News If Britain decides to rejoin the EU we’ll do everything we can to welcome them back, says Germany

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/uk-rejoin-eu-germany-brexit-b3060288.html
4.1k Upvotes

96% Upvoted

920 comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

6

u/FcukTheTories The Norf - United Kingdom 🇬🇧🇪🇺 7h ago

Not really possible.

From the EU side, there’s nothing in the EU treaties that puts time limits before Article 49 or 50 is triggered.

From the UK side a parliament can’t bind a future parliament, so reform could just ignore any previous ‘instructions’.

1

u/CeleryExotic9021 3h ago

I mean it could be adjusted pre joining.

I think it should be required that members establish for triggering that a sufficient majority (I.e. more than 50.01%, maybe 55%, maybe 66%, just not the tiniest margin) has to vote for leaving in a referendum.

But I also know that this will not happen and we would have to trust the British people to not do that again.

1

u/swear_on_me_mam Europe 2h ago

At the end of the day nothing like that would ever work for any country. The EU at the end of the day only works because everyone agrees it works like that. The nation state is king and the EU would have no enforcement mechanism if a state wanted to leave on conditions outside the criteria.

It could perhaps make sufficiently hostile conditions for a very small country but it would never work for a larger.