ARTICLE 50 TFEU MUST BE REFORMED. The mechanism for leaving the Union must be reviewed and expanded
The recent story of BREXIT and the long, complex and not yet finished, show how Article 50 of the TFEU, which theoretically regulates the exit of a country from the EU, has proved to be completely inadequate in the case of an effective exit country. Therefore, in view of what has happened, we should review this tool and make it effective to prepare a possible non-traumatic but friendly exit, providing for all possible cases of its application.
Here is the intervention of Antonio Maria Rinaldi in the AFCO committee yesterday on this issue.
Undoubtedly, the experience of the withdrawal from the European Union by the United Kingdom has revealed many application dysfunctions of the procedure indicated in Article 50 of the TFEU. Furthermore, it should be borne in mind that the article in question provides for an agreement that regulates future relations between the Union and the former Member State as only "possible" and also:
a) the agreement is not, by express provision, a prerequisite for withdrawal as it is operational after two years from the notification even in its absence;
b) any such agreement is not regulated in its reasonable and mandatory contents in such a way as to facilitate a negotiation that preserves mutual interests according to good faith and a cooperative spirit that should be maintained above all other interests, including "market" interests, between European countries .
Not secondarily, also on the aforementioned Brexit experience, as far as Article 50 can be modified and implemented (but this would always make sense only on condition that any current and future political and economic negotiations with the "withdrawing" country are facilitated and cooperative) the aforementioned article generates the misunderstanding (contrary to the legal principles in force between civilized countries) that it is possible to withdraw only " ad nutum ", ie as a pure expression of the will of a member state, and not also in a causal way, ie according to the reasons more legitimate considered in general international law.
In a perspective in which the safeguarding of peace and cooperation in Europe remains the substantial and main interest to aim for, well beyond the historicity of a single agreement structure, it must therefore be remembered that the only and irreplaceable regulatory framework in terms of treaty law is, and remains, the Vienna Convention which applies to all treaties, including those on which the European Union is founded, based on its value of general international law, which as you know, prevails as a superior source over any covenant source, in all its predictions.
This implies that Article 50 cannot and must not be, (not even suspected of being), contrary to this general international law; and this because it poses impossible conditions or objectively too onerous for the withdrawal, since this effect is contrary to the ius cogens , a profile that would manifest itself both in placing a de facto untraceable and perennial constraint on democratic States, and by implicitly suppressing the general hypotheses of causal withdrawal . In particular, both the withdrawal due to excessive cost and that due to serious breach by a party.
The recent (and non-recent) events of the lack of solidarity between the countries of the Union, expressly prohibited by Article 125 TFEU, combined with the inconsistent and irrational enforcement of the violation of the parameters of economic convergence, as it is limited only to the rules by now clearly questionable on the deficit and on the public debt, it makes this uncertainty and lacunae of the treaty (even only in terms of interpretation) particularly dangerous for peace and cooperation on our continent.
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The article ARTICLE 50 TFEU MUST BE REFORMED. The mechanism for leaving the Union must be reviewed and expanded comes from ScenariEconomici.it .
This is a machine translation of a post published on Scenari Economici at the URL https://scenarieconomici.it/bisogna-riformare-larticolo-50-la/ on Thu, 29 Oct 2020 09:20:17 +0000.