Suchergebnisse

In the debates about the UK's future relationship with the European Union, all sorts of possible alternatives have been bandied about, from "Singapore on Thames" to "Canada Plus", from "Switzerland" to "Ukraine", from "Norway" to "Australia". But what do these alternative relationship models really consist of and would they really be viable for the UK? Martin Westlake brings together distinguished practitioners and experts to examine the various options, real and potential, and to consider whether they would in fact offer a workable solution for the continued relationship between the EU and post-Brexit Britain

The 2016 Brexit referendum result has been portrayed as the consequence of various short-term phenomena: the financial crisis, austerity, migration and UKIP, to name a few. Overnight the political future of the UK took an unprecedented and unexpected turn against EU membership. Since then, the UK's government has been charting unknown waters in its negotiations to disentangle the United Kingdom from its membership and obligations to the European Union. In this book, Martin Westlake argues that focus on the short-term, reflex action of the Brexit vote has overshadowed a series of longer-term trends that were inexorably leading, or pushing, the UK away from full membership of the European Union. He shows that the UK was an increasingly semi-detached member, requiring ever more elaborate and ingenious fixes with opt-outs and rebates to keep its involvement in the project. Rather than a sudden, impulsive act of rejection, Brexit should be seen as having taken place over a number of years at various levels: a gradual slipping of the ties that bound the country to the European Union.

Annotation

Despite a growing body of academic literature about the European Union's public administration, there is a dearth of studies about the most senior managers in the institutions, the Secretaries-General. Consideration of the rich life of the late Sir Julian Priestley, an influential Secretary-General (SG) of the European Parliament, 1997-2007, demonstrates not only how Secretaries-General can be interesting subjects of study in their own right, but also how such SGs can, through the decisions they take and the policies they champion, be consequential for their institutions.