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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 06 March 2019
Article 50 of the Treaty on European Union was originally viewed by national constitutional courts as an important provision for upholding state sovereignty. The German Constitutional Court emphasized the provision in its reconciliation of the Lisbon Treaty with state sovereignty. The Czech and Latvian Constitutional Courts saw Article 50 as creating a balanced process for the exercise of the sovereign right to withdraw from the European Union. Prior to the Brexit referendum, there was little doubt in the literature that an Article 50 agreement could address the entirety of the future relationship between a withdrawing member state and the European Union. Since the Brexit referendum, the European Union has taken an increasingly narrow view of Article 50. This, combined with interpretations of other Treaty provisions, have both created significant disadvantages to the withdrawing member state. If—above and beyond natural imbalances in bargaining power—EU Law creates a position of inequality between the withdrawing member state and the EU in negotiations, then the pooled-sovereignty model of the European Union is called into doubt. Article 50 cannot simultaneously be viewed as upholding state sovereignty, whilst being exit-hostile to any state that uses the provision.
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154 Id. at 43–44, para. 4 (2017). Ironically, such an approach would take the same position on the amount of EU contributions as on the notorious “We send the EU £350 million a week” slogan by “Vote Leave” in referendum campaign.Google Scholar
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178 E.g., Kevin Doyle, We Won't Help the UK Come up With Border Solution, Independent (July 28, 2017, 2:59 PM), https://www.independent.ie/business/brexit/we-wont-help-the-uk-come-up-with-border-solution-leo-varadkar-35977592.html.Google Scholar
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180 See supra note 176, and accompanying text.Google Scholar
181 See Declaración 1/2004, supra note 25 (“the right to leave will have a promoting effect on the European integration process”).Google Scholar
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184 Reference re Secession of Quebec, [1998] 2 S.C.R. 217, paras. 90–95, (Can.).Google Scholar
185 See supra notes 8–12, and accompanying text.Google Scholar
186 Id. at para 95.Google Scholar
187 Tridimas, supra note 7, at 313.Google Scholar
188 Smismans, supra note 1.Google Scholar