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Defining the Implications of Brexit for the Future of European Integration
Research Papers13 Economics, Politics, International Organizations
2021 - 2025 years
Instead of conclusions
Instead of conclusions, it can be noted that the consequences of the UK’s withdrawal from the European Union cannot be given a strictly positive or strictly negative assessment. This event affected the functioning of the mechanisms of the European Union at all levels, so we can highlight the pros and cons of this event. On the one hand, the UK’s exit was a blow to the European Union. This process was accompanied by colossal reputational damage, economic weakening and the emergence of a new political center in Europe. The European Union has lost the right to act on behalf of the whole of Europe, as now there is a potential political counterbalance on the other side of the English Channel, which has the right to have its own point of view on any issue. It should be not forgotten that the UK was one of the strongest economies in the European Union, which means that the budget and, in particular, the spending plan need to be revised, since there is
less money in absolute terms. The reputational losses are mainly related to the very precedent of the state's withdrawal from the union, which was once considered an impeccable
supranational association. Especially given the weight of the UK’s reputation as a symbol of political stability and democracy within the Old World.…
The starting point of the Brexit can rightfully be considered the referendum on the desire to continue membership in a single family of European countries, which took place in the summer of 2016 in Great Britain, reflected the unwillingness of most of Her Majesty Elizabeth II subjects to continue to participate in the integration projects of the European Union, which was reflected on three main aspects of positioning the EU project in the international arena. The first of them is economic and demographic, because before Brexit, the European Union’s calling card was its worldview as a common market with 500 million potential producers and buyers, which, however, due to the British exit, decreased by 67 million people, which not only makes it impossible to position the EU as a common market for half a billion people, but also configures potential demographic problems in the long term, mostly for the UK, but the likelihood of such problems also for the bloc of EU countries as a whole is not excluded. The only solution to this problem for the European Union is a decisive territorial expansion through the inclusion of not only countries that are waiting for their membership in the EU – Kosovo, Montenegro, Northern Macedonia, Serbia, Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, whose total population barely reaches the 18 million mark, but also countries whose actual stage of development of the institutional, social and economic system does not meet European standards, such as Ukraine (40 million people) or Georgia (5 million people), which in theory can compete with the pre-crisis period, but it is important to understand that such an option is unlikely due to the general lack of trends in EU enlargement in recent years and the unpreparedness of candidate countries. The second factor can be considered the elimination of the degree of monopoly of the leadership of European institutions in identifying themselves with a single European people, which is impossible to imagine in the absence of the people of Great Britain in its composition. Great Britain, which for many centuries has been the engine for the development of European civilization, both in the technological, cultural or economic direction, has now become a country capable of conducting an independent domestic and foreign policy, which may differ from the “absolutely true” postulates of the European Union, thereby identifying Great Britain with other European countries, without which it is difficult to imagine the modern era of human development, such as Russia, Switzerland, Norway, Belarus, Ukraine or Iceland, which, however, are also not members of the European Union, but at all times have made and are making a significant contribution to the formation of such a multifaceted, rather than unified concept as Europe or European civilization. Also, do not underestimate the reputational losses associated with the UK's withdrawal from the EU, which is reflected in the inconsistency of the mantra of a consistent and irrevocable direction of European integration. Brexit, both for the countries of the European Union and for its immediate geopolitical environment, made it clear that a supra-confederate system of internal and external governance is not absolutely acceptable for each of the countries. The resulting polarity regarding the effectiveness and usefulness of the EU model, even on the part of one of the members of the union, underlines the lack of absolute truth about the key directions implemented by the EU leadership.
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