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BREXIT: QUO VADIS?

“Quo Vadis?” (Where are you going?) was the question tweeted by Donald Tusk, President of the European Council, regarding the position of Prime Minister Boris Johnson on Brexit some days before the deadline of October 31 2019 for the UK’s official withdrawal of the EU. Since June 2016, when a majority of British voters decided to leave the EU, the UK and the EU are immersed in a tortuous process defined by incertitude. For the first time in the history of the EU, a Member State renounces to its participation in the European project. Although both parties agreed on the objective of an orderly withdrawal that could mitigate the impact of this new and unexpected situation, after a long and intense negotiation process the final conditions of this withdrawal are not agreed. This process has revealed the contradictions and the complexity of the legal and socio-economic constrains of the political procedures. The final design of the future relations between the EU and the UK will undoubtedly have a great impact in both parties, as the recent institutional crises in the UK has already shown. This is the fourth seminar of a series that started in 2017 with the experimental intention of developing a seminar simultaneously to a historical event, which is the object of study. Thus, this seminar offers a picture of a living process that will provide an initial and direct analysis of this living situation, where the main tools are the information from the media and the official documents of the negotiating parties. The seminar will be organized in three modules. A first factual module (sessions 1 and 2), in which we will explain the determining factors that lead to the present situation. A second analytic module (sessions 3 and 4 and 5) in which we will examine with a practical approach the organization of the new framework of relations between the UK and the EU in the short and medium terms. On these previous basis, the third module (sessions 5 and 6) will try to evaluate the separate evolution of the UK and the EU after the reformulation of their respective status. The methodology of the course will concentrate in the analysis and the discussion of the EU and the UK positions on the conditions of the UK’s exit. This way, each student will hand two text commentaries of at least two pages about the main documents of the EU and the UK positions before they are discussed in class. Finally, there will be a group work on the predictions about the single situation of the UK and the EU once the withdrawal has been completed.

SECOND SEMESTER

ANTONIO DE CASTRO CARPENO

Antonio de Castro is Vice-Rector for Academic Affairs at IE University. He is Ph.D. in Social Sciences and graduate in Law by Madrid’s Autonomous University. He holds a Diploma of Advanced Legal European Studies from the College of Europe (Bruges, Belgium) and a Diploma in International Studies from the Spanish Diplomatic School (Madrid, Spain). Before joining IEU, he worked in the General Secretariat of the Council of the European Union (Brussels, Belgium) as EU Principal Administrator in the areas of External Relations (relations with Central and Eastern Europe) and Institutional Affairs (Information policy and Transparency). He was associated professor in the Department of Public Law and Legal Philosophy of the Law Faculty at Madrid’s Autonomous University, dedicated to European Law and Institutions.

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Skills

1. To acquire a comprehensive view of the evolution of the EU relations with the UK. 2. To develop analysis on the negotiating process between the EU and the UK since 2017. 3. To elaborate critical assessment of arguments on the EU and the UK positions and the result of the bilateral negotiations. 4. To build a personal view on the future of the EU and the UK based on objective and reasoned arguments.

Schedule

Which dates?

27-feb. 5-mar. 12-mar. 19-mar. 26-mar. 2-abr.

What day?

THURSDAY

What time?

17:30-19:00

Schedule
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