Jacob Öberg is a Full Professor of European Union Law at the Law Department at the University of Southern Denmark, Guest Professor in EU law at Örebro University and a Visiting Fellow at Lund University. He previously held positions as Associate Professor in EU law at Örebro University (where he acted as Deputy Head of Department) and as a Postdoctoral Fellow in law at Lund University. Jacob Öberg earned his PhD in European Law from the European University Institute in Florence (2014). His research interests lie primarily in EU constitutional law and EU criminal law, including; (1) multidisciplinary and contextual perspectives on EU law, (2) theories of EU integration (3) the federal dimension of EU law, and (4) the Union’s criminal policy and its development under the Lisbon Treaty. He has published widely in these areas in journals such as European Law Review, European Constitutional Law Review, Yearbook of European Law, and European Law Journal. He is a member of the Scientific Committee of the European Law Journal.
Jacob’s Thread
Eight years and one day ago….Britain vote to leave the European Union. Some reflections on Brexit from an external European perspective.
As a strong pro-European and EU law academic I was personally insulted by the vote which also came as a shock (I was in Birmingham for an EU law conference when the ref vote took place) as naively I had assumed it could never happen.
I was even more insulted by the disastrous Tory leadership, toxic politics and bickering (highlighted in the fall of Teresa May) which led the UK government to finally negotiate leaving the EU single market striking a deal which at best could be called feeble.
Still, and I have devoted a lot of my recent efforts to this task, there is a way back to the EU. The way to membership is a long and complex one to travel, requiring bold and strong political leadership in the UK and some understanding on behalf of the EU and its MS.
Perhaps membership is not feasible or desirable. But there is also a long and complex road for the UK to negotiate an overall stronger trading relationship with the EU and obtain access to the EU SM through an association agreement.
Regardless of what choices the UK makes in terms of improving its relationship with the EU, there will need to be real sacrifices in terms of losing sovereignty, formally regulatory power, accepting becoming a rule-taker and accepting free movement of persons.
For now, the peoples of the UK overall (if polls are to be believed as reliable) wish for a stronger relationship with the EU and access to the EU SM. Political leadership on this is at best ambivalent on this point so this needs changing.
For the UK to make a more demonstrable commitment for rejoining as a member of the EU or the single market the people’s wishes need to be aligned with political leadership. There will be a strong cross-party consensus which the bigger UK parties back up for this road.
Rejoining the EU and the single market might eventually require a new divisive referendum and these are just the first internal steps on the way. Subsequently all EU member states and the EP will need to accept a closer deal where the UK gets internal market access.
I have no doubt that the UK will eventually (in 10 years +) travel down this road & successfully rejoin the EU or the single market through EEA. And I will continue to advance this course with the efforts that I can muster but with my integrity as an academic & a person.
Ewan Kennedy’s Response
Ewan is a retired lawyer who lives in Argyll and who is a regular contributor to Yours for Scotland and is affectionately known as our “Legal Eagle”
This is a very important thread, which I commend to anyone with a serious interest. Lacking is any mention of the Scottish dimension, the reasons for which I fully understand, as you need to be fully invested in current affairs here right now to understand what’s going on.
It’s a fact that Scots voted 62% against Brexit, and a probability that the percentage for rejoining would now be much higher. The comparable figures in England must be murky; otherwise Starmer wouldn’t be bleating about refusing to contemplate the SM and CU.
The problem is of course that we were led to vote against regaining our freedom as an independent State in 2014. A gigantic factor in that was the constant message that voting NO was the only way for Scotland to remain in the EU. The Vow was a fraud visited on us, and it worked.
Many pro-independence Scots, myself included, are enraged that the party we voted for, in some cases throughout adult lifetimes, in mine just since 2010, when I realised that political reform and federalism were utterly dead, did nothing for us during the Brexit referendum.
Instead of reminding the UK government of its failed promises on federalism, the fraudulent Vow and demanding another Indyref, Nicola Sturgeon daily campaigned from a UK standpoint, encouraging all across the UK to reject Brexit. A noble cause, but one that belonged to others.
I believe that the then Tory government could have been persuaded to grant another Indyref, predicated on Brexit happening, given that they only granted that referendum because they believed that it would not succeed. The 2014 one had been granted on the same basis.
Co-dhiù, anyway, here we Scots are, stuck in a Union that at least half of us want out of, “led”, if I can use that word, by a bunch of couchsurfers under John Swinney, who have absolutely no idea of how to get us out of our current mess and lack the motivation to find one.
Meanwhile, Scots suffer from the ongoing damage to our major sectors, in no particular order tourism, hospitality, cultural, music, artistic, academic, computer, professional and financial, agriculture – beef, veg, fruit. We’re terribly short of people too.
We simply must get our freedoms back. Tragically, the SNP tell us daily, and in their manifesto, that this can only be done by rejoining the EU, whereas other routes, much simpler and quicker, are available. What matters is getting our freedoms back, under whatever acronym.
The most obvious alternatives to rejoining the EU are EFTA and some one-off arrangement, such as I believe the Swiss have. Chatting to some Swiss friends, with businesses and pretty switched on, persuaded me that all’s not well currently within the EU.
The EU has certainly moved on, not in entirely welcome directions, perhaps partly due to Brexit. After all, the UK had a major voice and was a big player, time and again getting special derogations to suit its perceived needs. Scotland could be better out.
All of this requires the fullest conversations and discussions within Scotland, not top-down assurances from politicians many of us simply don’t trust, some selected against far better candidates through an illegal process contrived to exclude people with views that didn’t suit.
MY COMMENTS
We are in the middle of a General Election where the disastrous consequences of Brexit for the UK is a taboo subject. Not mentioned by Tory or Labour carrying on the BBC tradition since 2016 of carrying out economic coverage minus any explanation of the Brexit consequences having anything to do with it.
The SNP are no better making out rejoining the EU would be a simple and easy process. It would not be. We would be debarred from rejoining because of the 25 year FREEPORT Licences the Scottish Government have jointly issued in cooperation with Westminster.
We also would require to be Independent which if we are relying on politicians to deliver, let’s be kind, seems a million miles away. Membership of EFTA however could be speedily arranged with Independence as would setting up our own Independent currency. Thereafter if there still existed demand for a fresh EU REFERENDUM on rejoining it could be arranged but as I believe having access to the Single Market is the key priority and that can be arranged via EFTA/EEA I am not sure that demand would still exist.
I am, as always
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Prof Öberg’s remarks are unfortunately very typical of many European (and global) intellectuals in that they tend to assume the UK is a single country. They have very limited if any understanding of the mankit Treaty of Union, that the ‘UK’ is merely a joint parliament/administration between Scotland and England (albeit one that functions entirely in the latter’s interest, as we saw with Brexit), or the fact that the Scots are and remain (for now at least) a sovereign people and can end the UK treaty-based alliance whenever we wish (i.e. when it is no longer in our country’s interest).
The same limited understanding also pervades the mostly culturally assimilated ‘No’ voting ‘intellectuals’ who run our own nation’s institutions and who keep us bound to the dominant ‘partner’ and subject to exploitation.
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All this frustrates the hell out of me.
I read an article a couple of days ago by David Dimbleby, who is well into his 80’s now, berating the poor quality of politicians in the U.K. in all parliaments. He reckoned that this is partly due to the said buffers never ever having had real jobs. They do not know how to analyse problems.
To me it’s worse than that. I think many have no common sense and are thick. They are only good at lying and back stabbing. Boot licking also.
Back to the EU/EEA/EFTA. We are where we are because they the MP’s we voted for are thick and believed their own hype. Do you remember the news article about Robb when he was briefly Brexit negotiator not understanding that lots of trade goes via Dover. I despaired at the time.
Talking about thick some of the eedjits at Holyrood are behind the so called Freeport’s. Another example of not understanding what they are doing. As Iain says this will bar us from EU entry in the future.
Is a cull allowed? A voter one. Fingers crossed. Best not to vote for an idiot so to be safe do not vote at all.
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I agree with Euan’s comments except this one:
“Nicola Sturgeon daily campaigned from a UK standpoint, encouraging all across the UK to reject Brexit. A noble cause, but one that belonged to others.”
In my opinion it really isn’t a noble cause when you are trying to overturn a democratic vote of other countries (England and Wales). He is, hover, correct in my view that it was someone else’s fight. The ‘material change’ of EU eviction against Scotland’s express wishes that Sturgeon explicitly specified for another referendum to take place had happened so the plebiscite should have proceeded forthwith in 2016. She and her cabal clearly did not have a plan and were not or ever serious about restoring Scotland’s full self-government with or without the
On Switzerland, they are a member of EFTA and the Schengen grouping but not the European Economic Area (EEA). They have, however, adopted sufficient provisions of EU law to allow them Single Market access. So a bespoke arrangement. It just shows you what can be achieved if you have the necessary single-minded focus and sufficient negotiating skills.
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Why on Earth would any country want to join the utterly ruined , Globalist-infected , pro-war Neoliberal-dogmatic E.U that is presiding over – hastening – the destruction of the European Continent ?
Until and unless the demented Von der Leyen regime is chased out of that organisation and the possibility of such people ever regaining power we shouldn’t even be contemplating – attempting – joining that failed enterprise .
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Jacob says “Britain vote to leave the European Union”
NO England voted to leave, Wales did also, but I believe that is due to the very high English plantation in Wales..Plus the UNIONIST in Government.
Scotland & NI voted remain, but in this UNION of Equals and “family” Scotland has NO say we have no voice, only one of the TWO nations who make up the UNITED KINGDOM (is entitled to any say 7 do as it pleases. When you have a Parliament called the UK Parliament yet Scotland has a mere 57 seats as an equal partner in that UNION, while England has over 500 English seats they always win.. Whether Blue Tory or Red Tory they are English..
How the hell can any Scots MP win anything in that mother of all fekkin Parliaments.. it’s an English Parliament with it’s head an English Monarch..
And so long as Scots continue to vote in that Parliament’s elections, & worse the so called INDY parties lying to us they can make a difference being in WM, while pretending to want Independence yet take up seats in that parliament..
Scotland at least in the Political sense will forever be tied to a failing country that is England, it has little in the way of resources, it makes nothing, it has little in the way of EXPORTS, This is why England can NOT stand on it’s own as an Independent country. It relies on Scotland’s resources and our exports, that travel South have a Jack put on them & renamed BRITISH..
For a small nation that invented so much and gave so much to the world, we really are a nation of stupid MUGS today, when we are happy to see our taxes flow into English coffers & all our resources piped down South (only to be sold back to us at the higher prices in all of the UK)
Scotland the ONLY country in the world to discover OIL and get poorer.. And that is OK by far too many who would never allow their next door neighbour to run their household for them.. Yet they allow another country to ruin ours & their children’s futures, by stealing all our resources & also resourcing the jobs our energy creates to other countries.. Wha’s Like us eh!
The EU is as corrupt a UNION as the UK, & any other Western Government, it is NOT something I would want to be part of, We pay for what we need via EFTA & EEA. NO MORE UNIONS…That also means NO more WARS for Scotland and our sons and daughters..
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I think we should recognise that Brexit was a purely English project, largely driven by a hyped up dislike of Immigrants (particularly those with a darker skin and a very different religion) and also by a feeling of loss at the end of the ‘British Empire’, which they ruled, plus the fact that they were just one of many members of the EU, so couldn’t control it.
As happened in Scotland in 2014 over independence, a majority of English incomers in Wales, swung the vote to Leave in 2016. So I would argue that the Celtic nations of the UK were outvoted and forced out of the EU by the massive predominance of England and the English in our so-called family of nations – but only when that fiction suits England. At other times we are one country and they want to make it as homogenious as they can, by imposing their language, culture and political system on us.
The Welsh still have their language, which is used by a much higher proportion of people than use either (or even both) of our indigenous Scottish languages, a fact resented by many English people living there who object to their childern having to learn Welsh at school. That has helped them to maintain a culture, largely ignored by the English as it is impenetrable to them.
I fully agree with Mickmaw in being angry about the way we seem to have turned into a nation of stupid mugs, unable to see or fight against the way we are being systematically impoverished by the English establishment and wish it were otherwise. I think this arttitude is in lagre part the fault caused mass media we now have, all in English and promoting an Anglophone attitude that was not as prevalent in the past, when Scots seemed to have been more able to rise up and take a stand eg in the medieval wars of indpendence in which we were sucessful and in the Jacobite period, when we lost and suffered the consequences which we are still subjected to today.
I am also angry about the direction the EU seems to be going and would much prefer Scotland to join EFTA or set up an individual relationship with it to re-eatablish the trade links we will need as an independent country.
With the important work and research of Salvo and Independence Scot, I hope many more Scots will realise the truth of how we are treated by our colonial masters, and be prepared to act to remedy that before it is too late. The traitrous acts of our elected representatives in agreeing to issue licences for the disatrous Free Ports should be a call to arms for us all.
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” ….the possibility off such people ever raining power is eliminated ”
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Fortunately, I can vote for Colette Walker on Thursday, otherwise, it was my intention to spoil my ballot paper with the message: #End the Union
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I would do the same if I could.
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‘Another example of not understanding what they are doing’. Of that andyfromdunning I am not so sure. It is my belief they are fully aware of the consequences of their actions, particularly on the issue of Freeports, it is just that they hold the Scottish electorate in contempt and in particular Forbes who in conjunction with Gove has ensured large areas of Scotland and the population within will be held in thrall by tax evading corporations based in some obscure offshore haven.
There has to be a better way forrit other than the EU in its current form lurching dangerously to the right with the implications that will surely present. On the question of collaborating in sending a ‘representative’ to a foreign parliament, I am refusing to do so however I will repurpose my vote by endorsing it thus #End The Union, and urge other likeminded to do so also.
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“Eight years and one day ago Britain vote to leave the European Union.”
Ahem! Britain did not vote to Leave. Its non-sovereign English half voted to Leave, while its sovereign Scottish half voted to Remain.
Britain is not a unitary state; it only looks like that from the perspective of the other nations of the world, because at that level they only ever deal with the UK government. Internally it is unremittingly binary on all sorts of levels, but Westminster’s English establishment refuses to recognise this despite it being the formal, and formally-documented, constitutional truth.
Looking at the founding documents of the Union, it is clear that England, as represented by her MPs, was granted no formal governance authority over Scotland or her MPs at all, and that the Parliament’s authority over the Scottish half of its Union derives solely from Scotland’s MPs, and it and England’s MPs are therefore not empowered to ignore them or overrule them.
This is because those who could grant such authority over Scotland didn’t. They weren’t even asked!
“Regardless of what choices the UK makes in terms of improving its relationship with the EU, there will need to be real sacrifices in terms of losing sovereignty, formally regulatory power, accepting becoming a rule-taker and accepting free movement of persons.”
These would only be acceptable and therefore agreed because they would be limited to specific areas relevant to the proper operation of the EU Treaty. There could be no general loss of sovereignty. It would not be the case that the EU would rule Scotland (or Britain) in an equivalent manner to how Westminster rules Scotland and England, and despite UKIP trolling, that was never the case in the past!
If an independent Scotland re-joined the EU, we would not be ‘swapping rule from London with rule from Brussels’.
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Ewan’s comments well worth reading. The EU has changed a lot over the past decades. It has brought into my thinking the kind of union that it is. I can understand to a degree after a world war why non national organizations were created, basically a fear of what happened happening again. On the other side of that was the creation of an international organisation which eventually became the EU seeking to bypass people and nations. It’s a short journey to seeing people as the problem and elite opinion, beholden to no community or nation as being the answer. The EU commission is the elite opinion responsible for the legislative agenda and the parliament is the rubber stamp. The elected part of it can say no in theory but that elected part is stretched across 27 countries and a hundred languages. Add in the generous wages, social status and benefits going to MEPs. It is far easier to go along with the narrative that the values and opinions of those who set the agenda are as perfect as they are ever going to be in this world. It then follows that any dissent based on damaging policies coming down from those elites, long abstracted from their native societies, is a result of a moral defect in the people reinforcing the belief that the people need to be bypassed and blocked from having any real democratic input.
In a country of 5 million we might need a 500 thousand people to effect a change when we realise the politicians have formed a clique passing laws that damage our societies. EFTA would be a better fit for us.
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” It’s a short journey to seeing people as the problem and elite opinion, beholden to no community or nation as being the answer. ” . Spot-on . G.M . Excellent description .
That ” short journey ” was undertaken some time ago . The * covid * hysteria provided a bullet train to accelerate the process .
Now , with the reelection of UvdL , it’s apparent that the Globalist’s are in full control and we can expect more , much more of the same rule by remote ” we know best , shut it ” decree . The same Olympians who mouth-breathe about something they call ” Democracy ” as they erase our freedoms one-by-one and simultaneously force their lunatic policies/ideologies down the throats of * electorates * – something of a misnomer as the electorate have zero say in the election of the EU hierarchy or the policies and direction imposed by them
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