European Union Law Professor Perfectly Explains Process To Revoke Article 50

5 January 2019, 19:22

After Ken Clarke called on the government to revoke Article 50, Clive Bull asked an EU law professor whether it is legally possible to do so.

The former chancellor and home secretary described the remaining three months to March 29th as a "considerable crisis" because "we have no idea what arrangements we're going to put in place when we leave the EU".

Ken Clarke told Matt Frei: "We plainly need more time. There's only about 45 sitting days left in parliament and it's quite obvious that this date, which was arbitrarily chosen in the first place should be put off."

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- Article 50: What Is It And What Does It Mean?

The UK is due to leave the EU on March 29th. Picture: Getty

Speaking to Clive Bull, a professor in European Union law said that while it is legally possible to revoke Article 50, it would be a political challenge to do given the short mount of time remaining before March 29th.

Catherine Barnard said: "We would have to pass an act of parliament and as you can imagine that isn't going to be straight forward."

But when Clive asked whether it would be possible to trigger Article 50 after revoking it, as Ken Clarke suggested, she said: "It is theoretically possible, we could revoke Article 50 to buy ourselves more time and then trigger Article 50 again.

"But I think the politics of that might be on a bit tricky and it would have to be done very quickly because time's running out.

Catherine also warned that there would be difficulty in attempting to delay Article 50, as the European Parliament elections take place just a few weeks after the March 29th deadline.

"Any extension, assuming all other 27 member states agree to it, would likely to have to expire before the 23rd May because otherwise we'd end up in the bizarre situation of British people going to the polls to elect an MEP who won't be there very long, and all of the UK seats in the European Parliament have already been reallocated.

"The timing of that couldn't be worse".