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European Court Final Arbiter on Brexit If There is No Amicable Accord on Britain's EU Breakaway

Published July 30th, 2018 - 11:06 GMT
(Shutterstock/File Photo)
(Shutterstock/File Photo)

European judges will have the final say on a range of key Brexit battlegrounds, it has been revealed.

If there is no agreement between Britain and the EU over withdrawal terms, the European Court of Justice will be the final arbitrator.

It means the court could decide on crucial aspects of Britain's departure from the union, including the rights of EU citizens in the UK and the £39 ($51)billion divorce bill.

Discussing the former point, former Tory leader Iain Duncan Smith told The Times: 'This would be akin to saying that a UK citizen living in America could have their rights protected by a UK court.'

 

 

Another area in which the court could have the power of arbitration is over the so-called 'backstop' guarantee of no hard border between Ireland and the UK.

Tory MP Sir Bernard Jenkin, a prominent eurosceptic, said: 'This is very profound. It is giving a status to the European Court of Justice in the withdrawal agreement that is not accorded to the Supreme Court in the United Kingdom.'

He added that it creates a 'deeply unequal relationship'.

But a government source told The Times the court would not, in fact, have the final say.

The paper, however, quotes the current EU draft text which explains that an arbitration panel may 'at any point decide to submit the dispute brought before it to the Court of Justice of the EU for a ruling... The Court of Justice of the EU shall have jurisdiction over such cases and its rulings shall be binding on the Union and the UK.'

It comes as Richard Kellaway, the chairman of the Maidenhead Conservative association, where Mrs May has been an MP since 1997, said his members will not accept any more concession to Europe.

 

This article has been adapted from its original source.

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