Well, sure, but we’re not going to have any influence as a full 3rd country either
Surprised (I shouldnt be) that the cabinet backs the deal. Waiting for the deal to be published and then I will have to find a legal analysis from someone trustworthy.
Then again I suspect the EU will stick to its own interpretation of the deal whatever the actual legal text ends up saying in any case, and manipulate whatever mechanisms exist to enforce it. And Barnier, Juncker et al might all be gone when this becomes relevant, but Selmayr and Weyand won’t be, and the EU’s interpretation that’s been leaked is coming from Weyand. So legal advice from even a hypothetical neutral British lawyer might be irrelevant.
(This is not really a matter of EU dishonesty so much as a different tradition of the way the technocracy operates. Weyand has been quite open about the EU’s view, and I think we should take her at her word rather than assuming that because the text of the treaty appears to say something different that that is actually what it is understood to mean in EU circles)
This is pretty amusing given that the UK has spent the last year pretending it didn’t sign up to what it clearly did in the December joint report, and then again in the March text.
The March text was never agreed at a political level and doesn’t really form any kind of legal agreement.
Paragraphs 49 and 50 of the December agreement are regarded by British legal sources whom I wouldn’t consider rabid brexiteers to be so incoherent as to be legally meaningless. I don’t think anyone really knew what they meant until the EU published it’s February draft.
In any case, in the case of the WA the EU have made it very clear what their interpretation is. It would be stupid in the extreme not to believe that this is the interpretation that will be made to stick.
That’s old history, spend the time you’d spent hashing it out and read the new agreement.
And then tldr it for the non native speaker. :D
I tried, but I think reading the agreement is a futile endeavour. Going to wait to see what the lawyers say tommorrow :)
In case you’re curious, this is the transition extension provision (the relevant bit anyway):
As far as I can tell, May has thrown fishing under the bus, along with financial services. All to get rid of FoM and the ECJ.
If the UK and the EU can’t agree on any candidates for chair of the arbitration panel, a Dutchman picks the chair.
I wonder if the cabinet noticed that wrinkle.
What, like a randomly selected Dutchman, or a particular one?
Like you, I have given up attempting to read this agreement in all its riveting detail.
It’s a specific Dutchman. The secretary general of the permanent court of arbitration is Dutch :)
There’s also a backdoor which seems to take a huge amount of stuff out of arbitration and into the domain of the CJEU. I don’t really understand it though.
The Secretary-General of the Permanent Court of Arbitration . To be clear, he picks randomly from a list of nominees jointly suggested by the EU and the UK.
Ah!
Well, at last things are going to be decided - one way or the other. I’ll be interested to hear if the DUP can be persuaded down out of their tree of outrage, but they seem pretty high up in the branches right now. And it’s a long, hard climb down!
‘Practical’, ‘sensible’ Tories will vote for this, even if they hate it. Soubry, for instance, and maybe Grieve, will vote for it even though they may hate it. I don’t know what others like Mogg etc. will do. But this could be a very, very close vote. And there’s plenty of time before it happens for the whips to turn the thumbscrews…
It’s not that complex. It’s basically anything that hinges on a question of EU law, as opposed to the WA itself.
People are focusing on the Tories, but I see a lot of Labour backbenchers supporting it, especially if it looks like it will pass. Then again, my political prognoses are terrible.
Agreed! This is really a knife edge political scenario.
Field comes out in favour of the deal.
To lose one Brexit secretary is a misfortune, to lose two looks like carelessness.
Raab going suggests to me that over a hundred Tories will reject the deal. Even if it is forced through with Labour votes there’s a real danger that a future government might choose to abrogate it, unleashing more chaos. Ridiculous short termism from May.