Forty-eight hours before the 2014 Scottish independence referendum, the then Spanish Secretary of State for the EU, Méndez de Vigo, appeared on the BBC. During his interview, he rejected the claims of the then Scottish First Minister, Alex Salmond, according to which an independent Scotland could negotiate membership ‘from within’ the EU. Instead, he argued that Scotland would have had to follow the ‘normal‘ accession process provided by Article 49 TEU, casting doubt on whether Spain would ever consent to it. The issues highlighted in this largely forgotten interview are not unique to that mom ..read more

On Tuesday 28 June, First Minister Nicola Sturgeon addressed the Scottish Parliament about her plans for a second independence referendum. According to the proposed Bill, the referendum will take place on 19 October 2023. The announcement reopened the age-old debate about the ‘festering issue’. Whether Holyrood does possess the power to organise such referendum without the explicit consent of Westminster. The Power to Organise an Independence Referendum The Scottish Parliament has had the power to enact primary legislation from the very beginning. Its legislative powers are def ..read more

Banksy - Archway salvaged from Heathrow Airport The EU is taking legal action against the UK in response to the government’s plan to revise the Northern Ireland Protocol after the UK government released a bill proposing to unilaterally amend the legal mechanism that ensures smooth trade of goods between Great Britain, Northern Ireland and Europe. Refusing to renegotiate the protocol, the EU says what the bill proposes would breach international law. The protocol has stirred up longstanding political and economic tensions, and the UK government has repeatedly sought to amend it. So, how did we ..read more

The European Union has warned that it will “respond with all measures at its disposal” if the UK goes ahead with a plan to unilaterally rewrite the most contentious part of their Brexit agreement, sparking fear of a trade war. How did the two sides once again end up at loggerheads and what is the UK threatening to do? Foreign secretary Liz Truss has made a statement to parliament setting out her intentions on the matter. This is what we know so far. What is the protocol? The UK government’s decision to leave the EU single market and customs union after Brexit left both sides with a problem. I ..read more

Hi everyone, Long time, no see. As I am sure you know, it has been a challenging and very busy period for everybody including myself. I have not updated the blog for some time as I had concentrated on other things. Anyway, hopefully, now I will be able to post more often. In this huge post, you can find two recent op-eds of mine on the current Cyprus issue negotiations. The first one is in English while the second in Greek. Both of them analyse the agreed parameters of the elusive settlement. Enjoy (or not)! A brief lexicon of the Cyprus issue negotiations Nicosia: South of the Green Line He ..read more

Last year, I was lucky enough to spend my research leave in the Institut d'Estudis de l'Autogovern, Barcelona. There, I worked on my project ‘The Right of Self-Determination in the EU constitutional order.‘ Here is a video presentation I did before Christmas where I present the preliminary findings of the project. Enjoy ..read more

A view of the town of Kastellorizo. Turkey can be seen in the distance. Credit...Eirini Vourloumis for The New York Times One hot day in the summer of 1847, 19-year-old British soldier William Mills decided to take a dive in the Ionian Sea to cool down. Unfortunately for him, he was attacked and killed by a shark. A couple of years later, Greece’s national poet, Dionysios Solomos, inspired by that tragic incident, wrote the poem ‘Πορφύρας’ [Porfyras], using the dialect of Corfu. A friend of the poet expressed his doubts. The Greek nation, he believed, would be more welcoming to a poem written ..read more

Last Tuesday, something rare took place in Westminster. The UK Government officially announced its intention to breach the Withdrawal Agreement that it had signed and ratified a few months ago. Brandon Lewis, the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, admitted that the Internal Market Bill which the Government was to reveal the following day ‘does break international law in a very specific and limited way.’ On Wednesday, true to its word, Boris Johnson’s administration presented a bill that has already been described as an ‘eye-watering’ att ..read more

Ten days before the UK is supposed to withdraw from the EU, Westminster has not yet approved the terms of such withdrawal. Broadly speaking, those concern the protection of the rights of EU citizens living in the UK and UK citizens’ living in the EU; the financial settlement; the terms of the transition; and ensuring that the Irish border remains frictionless in order for the Good Friday Agreement to be protected. The latter has become the Schleswig-Holstein Question of our times. The revised Withdrawal Agreement recognises that, de jure, Northern Ireland remains within the UK customs union. A ..read more

Not quite… The Brexit negotiations have been haunted by an almost unsolvable riddle.  How could the UK and the EU keep the Irish border free of any physical infrastructure without jeopardising the integrity of the single market?  That riddle has two possible solutions. The UK as a whole could opt for a relationship with the EU that would be much closer than the one described in its red lines. Since Theresa May’s Lancaster House speech, such red lines entailed that the UK would not be part of the single market and the customs union after ..read more