Prospects for and Implications of “Brexit”

The United Kingdom has always had an uneasy relationship with the European Union. The current U.K. government has promised the British people that they will get a chance in 2017 to decide whether they should finally break away from the EU entirely. British critics see the European Union as an undemocratic imposition of foreign rules on an unwilling British public, while British proponents see the EU as an important source of British prosperity and a magnifier of British influence in the world. Much like the referendum on Scottish independence, an EU referendum campaign promises to be fiercely fought with strong claims on both sides.

Before the campaign begins, on October 10 the Brookings Center on the United States and Europe (CUSE) and the United Kingdom’s Economic and Social Research Council’s program on the U.K. in a Changing Europe hosted a discussion to explore the prospects for, and implications of, the so-called “Brexit” for Britain and for the world. The first panel examined the internal implications, including the legal, economic and political implications of Brexit for the future of the United Kingdom. The second panel featured international perspectives on Brexit and examined what it might mean for the British role in the world.

Anand Menon of King’s College London and Brookings Fellow Jeremy Shapiro moderated the panel discussions, which featured CUSE Director Fiona Hill, Damian Chalmers of the London School of Economics, John Springford of the Centre for European Reform, Nicolas Jabko of Johns Hopkins University and Daniel Kelemen of Rutgers University.

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