MEPs on the European Parliament’s constitutional affairs committee (AFCO) stress the inter-relatedness of future divorce agreements between the United Kingdom and the European Union that will govern the EU’s relations with the UK once it becomes a ‘third country.’
Under Article 50 of the treaty of the EU, ‘the withdrawal agreement must take account of the framework for the future relationship of the withdrawing member state with the Union. This framework should therefore be defined before an agreement on the future relationship is negotiated,’ explains a document drawn up by the committee on the impact of Brexit in domains covered by the committee, adding: ‘The content of both agreements is thus interdependent, and the scope and object of the withdrawal agreement will change in function of how the future relationship will be framed.’
If the negotiations take longer than the two years foreseen in Article 50 of the treaty, the MEPs recommend a ‘cautious alignment’ between the exit agreement and the agreement on future relations. To this end, ‘transitional measures’ may help keep the process smooth.
Feeling – like the foreign affairs committee (see other article) – that it has the legal powers to pilot the draft report that is supposed to grant (or refuse) the European Parliament’s consent to the exit agreement between London and the EU, the AFCO committee lists measures that could be included in the divorce procedure: - conditions for the withdrawal of British representatives from all EU institutions and bodies; - the rights of British citizens residing in the EU and EU citizens residing in the UK; - British contributions to the EU budget and the balance of the EU’s budget interventions in the UK; - the rights of European officials holding British passports; - the closure of European agencies located in the UK (such as the European Bank Authority); - the UK’s withdrawal from the EU’s civilian missions and agreements linking it to Europol and Frontex; - establishing border controls and possibly special solutions for Northern Ireland and Gibraltar; - the fate of cases pending at the European Court of Justice; - changes in rights and duties arising from international agreements to which the EU and its member states are party.
Deciding on MEP numbers before the next term of office
AFCO stresses the importance of reaching agreement on the number of MEPs in the European Parliament in the next term of office, irrespective of the date when the United Kingdom actually leaves the EU.
This necessity would still be required in the following cases: - the future decision on the composition of Parliament (amending Decision 2013/312) gives a calculation formula for the number of seats; - the future decision sets a number of seats per member state in a 27-state solution and a 28-state solution (while the UK is still in the EU). Either way, the future decision will have to stipulate whether the 73 seats allocated for the UK will disappear or be partly or fully divided up among other countries.
See: http://bit.ly/2l2CggK (Original version in French by Mathieu Bion)