Cover image: erhui1979 / iStock Cover design: www.ironicitalics.com Free open access versions available from www.ucl.ac.uk/ucl-press ‘Brexit and Beyond is a must read. It moves the ongoing debate about what Brexit actually means to a whole new level... it provides a much-needed scholarly guidepost for our understanding of the significance of Brexit, not only for the United Kingdom, but also for the future of the European continent.’ Catherine E. De Vries, Professor in the Department of Government, University of Essex and Professor in the Department of Political Science and Public Administration, Free University Amsterdam

Rethinking the futures of Europe

This article considers how one of the ‘archipelago of contradictions’ raised by Brexit is the prospect of unconventional policy change, in so far as it includes – amongst other options – ‘returning’ to prior conventions that were scaled up from the UK to the EU, and then returned to the UK through EU directives. To explore this, the paper divides UK equality legislation into three types: (a) that which was created in the UK (b) that which flows from membership of the European Union and (c) that which reflects an outgrowth of the two. The translation of this into social policy has typically taken a patchwork approach, including a discursive public function which addresses the rights of distinct groups as well as their modes of interaction. The scope and scale of existing equality approaches have therefore become central to the kinds of social and political citizenship achieved by Black and Minority Ethnic (BAME) Britons. While the dangers of Brexit rhetoric are apparent to see, we do not yet know how withdrawal from the EU revises (a), (b) or (c). The article makes a tentative attempt to shed light on these entanglements by focusing on public policies enacted to pursue race equality in particular.

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What will Happen to Race Equality Policy on the Brexit Archipelago? Multi-Level Governance, ‘Sunk Costs’ and the ‘Mischief of Faction’

Article 26 TFEU dates back to the Single European Act (SEA) of 1986 and was inserted one year later, in the context of the first great revision of the initial EEC Treaty, as Article 8A. The common market is seen as the predecessor of the internal market. Article 2 of the EEC Treaty of 1957 determined that “it shall be the aim of the Community, by establishing a Common Market and progressively approximating the economic policies of Member States, to promote throughout the Community a harmonious development of economic activities, a continuous and balanced expansion, an increased stability, an accelerated raising of the standard of living and closer relations between its Member States.” Following this aim, the EEC Treaty in particular intended the establishment of a common market (Article 8) as well as a customs union (Article 12 et seqq.) and standardised fundamental freedoms in the area of free movement of goods, persons, services and capital (Articles 9–11, 48–73). Furthermore, the Treaty of 1957 anchored the establishment of a system of genuine competition and—if necessary—the harmonisation of the Member States’ legislation. Fundamental freedoms, legislative approximation and the protection of fair competition build since then the constituents of the Single European Market.

Article 26 [Establishing the Internal Market]

Regardless of what happens in the next few months and years in the post-referendum UK, much of the harm has been done. The uncertainty, in particular, is killing. It will have a significant impact on many of the UK's most productive economic sectors including universities and financial services. It will cast a shadow over inward investment and over the willingness to take risks of those responsible, for example, for building new infrastructure. There will be a brain drain. Already in some respects the EU is acting as if the UK were no longer a Member State. It has no Commissioner since Jonathan Hill's resignation. After the EUCO summit on 29 June which took pace without the UK's presence, EU27 conclusions were issued.

Jo Shaw

Papers

Citizenship, Migration and Free Movement in Brexit Britain