Working Papers

My latest Working Paper explores how Scotland and Northern Ireland can remain in the EU after the result of the Brexit referendum. Its findings have been reported and discussed by the media

'From Britain and Ireland to Cyprus: Accommodating "Divided Islands" in the EU Political and Legal Order' EUI Working Paper AEL 2016/02 

In the Brexit referendum of 23 June 2016, England and Wales voted to leave the EU, while Scotland and Northern Ireland voted to remain. Following that, there has been a debate about how it would be possible to achieve the continuing EU presence of the UK constituent nations that do not want to be taken out against their will. This paper explores two pathways for Scotland and Northern Ireland to remain in the EU. The first entails the achievement of Scottish independence and the reunification of Ireland through democratic referendums. To this effect, the paper reviews the right of secession of those two constituent nations under UK constitutional law and revisits the debate on the appropriate legal basis regulating Scotland’s future EU Accession. The second pathway explores how it would be possible for Scotland and Northern Ireland to remain in the EU even without seceding from the UK. In order to do that, the paper points to the remarkable flexibility of the EU legal order to accommodate the differentiated application of Union law. By focusing on Cyprus, in particular, the paper assesses the possible challenges that such an arrangement would entail.

'EuroMed, ENP, UfM: Fostering region-building and promoting inter regionalism? in G Fernandez Arribas and T Takacs (eds), The EU Relations with the Southern Mediterranean in the aftermath of the Arab Spring (CLEER 2013/03)

The aim of the proposed paper is to problematise the view according to which the EU ‘promotes a world order where regions gain increasing legitimacy as actors in international affairs,’ by focusing on whether the Union does foster in reality region-building through the overlapping policy frames of ENP, Euro-Mediterranean Partnership (EuroMed) and the Union for the Mediterranean (UfM). The thesis of the paper is that, firstly, the chiefly bilateral character of the ENP questions the region-building dimension of this policy. Secondly, the ENP multilateral dimension with regard to the Mediterranean area, consisting mainly out of overlapping policy frames of EuroMed and the UfM, could be better understood in sub-regionalist (marked by dependence of countries on the fringe of Europe on the EU) rather than inter-regional (an interaction between supposedly diplomatic equals) terms.