Brexit. Tra diritto e politica Federico Fabbrini. Società editrice il Mulino, 2021, 144 p., €13, ISBN: 978-88-15-29129-5

Abstract

Brexit has represented one of the most debated and controversial events in the history of European integration. For the first time, a member state decided to withdraw from the EU, questioning the vision of a linear development of the integration process and certifying the crisis of the ideal of supranationality in comparison with a revival of nationalist and sovereign thrusts. Since the outcome of the June 2016 Referendum made apparent the will of the majority of the British people to leave the EU, scholars throughout the world have proposed various analysis and interpretation in order to deepen this unprecedented phenomenon, but the considerable complexity that has characterized the Brexit process since its early stages has often produced frustration and created a general lack of comprehension of this event from the audience. Federico Fabbrini, Full Professor of European Law at the School of Law & Government of Dublin City University (DCU) and Principal of the Brexit Institute, tries to dispel the frequent doubts on this topic publishing a pocket-sized volume entitled ‘Brexit. Tra diritto e politica’ in which he offers a concise, extremely complete and exhaustive account of the main steps that characterized the process of the UK’s exit from the EU. The originality of this work lies in the multidisciplinary methodological approach that Fabbrini chose for the drafting of the book, combining both political and institutional elements with considerations relating to Law and Economics. In fact, as the author explains in the introduction of the text, a multidisciplinary analysis results the most appropriate in order to fully capture the dynamics that have influenced a complex process such as Brexit (p. 14). According to Fabbrini, while the economic elements were proving marginal in the definition of Brexit, this last was being mostly influenced by an intersection of juridical and political mechanisms. In fact, although Brexit was primarily a political act, animated by the sovereign and populist aspiration to ‘take back control’ of the country, rejecting the dynamics of transnational interdependence, the modalities with which the UK left the EU, and the terms of the withdrawal agreement itself, have been strongly influenced by legal considerations, mainly related to the specificity of the constitutional system in force in the UK and the peculiarities of the European Law. The 10 chapters of the book can be divided into three parts: in the first (ch.1-3), the author tries to identify the political reasons for the alleged Euroscepticism of the UK by briefly retracing the historical relationship between the UK and the EU, from the early stages of the process of European integration to the fateful 2016 Referendum. In the second section (ch. 4-6), Fabbrini analyzes the negotiation processes and the UK’s withdrawal agreement from the EU, identifying the elements that determined a sharp contrast between the political aspirations of the supporters of Brexit to sever ties with the EU and the stringent legal constraints that make this target practically impossible. The final part (ch. 7-10) is instead dedicated to final reflections on the advantages of the EU and the difficulties of leaving it, also in the light of the Italian debate on Europe.