A New European Neighbourhood without the EU’s Neighbourhood Clause: The (potential) special relationship in EU-UK relations under Article 8 TEU

Brendan Rooney

Duodecim Astra, Issue 1, 2021, pp. 79 – 97
 

Author description

About the author: Brendan Rooney is a practising Barrister-at-Law in Ireland and is a 2019 graduate from the Master of European Law (LLM) programme at the the College of Europe specialising in the European Neighbourhood Policy.


Abstract

For the first time in its history, a Member State has withdrawn from the EU through the process of Article 50 TEU, resulting in the UK occupying an unforeseen and unique position within the EU’s neighbourhood. Unlike any other relationship that the EU has developed with a neighbouring country, the aim of EU-UK relations is the disentanglement of the UK from the European legal order instead of integration into it. This is coupled with the fact that withdrawing from the EU actually takes place in an integration-based framework and is interwoven with the values of the EU. In this context, Article 8 TEU, the often forgotten Neighbourhood clause, would seem to provide the EU with an unambiguous legal basis to develop a special relationship with neighbouring countries founded on EU values. Despite the unique starting point and nature of the relationship, the EU-UK Trade and Cooperation Agreement has been concluded, not on the basis of the Neighbourhood clause, but on the ‘catch-all’ provision of Article 217 TFEU. Article 217 TFEU is the substantive legal basis used to establish an association between the EU and a third country, regardless of that third country being a neighbour or not. However, the Trade and Cooperation Agreement does not establish an association between the EU and the UK but, instead, pursues the ultimate aim of Article 8 TEU, namely to establish a relationship “within an area of prosperity and good neighbourliness characterised by close and peaceful relations based on cooperation”. The role that Article 8 TEU could have played or could still play in the development of EU-UK neighbourly relations remains to be assessed.

Keywords

Keywords: Article 8 TEU, Association, EU-UK Relations, Neighbourhood clause, Privileged Partnership, Withdrawal.

Full article: A New European Neighbourhood without the EU’s Neighbourhood Clause: The (potential) special relationship in EU-UK relations under Article 8 TEU

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