Where Does the UK Belong?

Abstract

On 23 June 2016, a referendum will be held in the United Kingdom on the question whether the UK should remain in the European Union or leave the European Union. This referendum marks the culmination point of a gradual process whereby the UK has become ever more semi-detached from the EU, and at the time of writing the result was very much in doubt, despite the success of Prime Minister David Cameron in persuading the other 27 Member States and the other EU institutions to sign up to a ‘new settlement’ for the EU at the European Council meeting in Brussels in February 2016. This essay explores the free movement dimensions of that ‘new settlement’, highlighting areas of uncertainty and explaining how the UK’s approach to renegotiating free movement fits with its previous approach this increasingly contested field of EU law. The question is less where EU citizens belong, but rather whether the UK belongs in or out of the EU.

Keywords: Referendum, Brexit, immigration, free movement, European Union, negotiation, European Council, United Kingdom