Workshop “What if Britain leaves? A European response to the UK referendum”
Experts discussed the question What if Britain leaves? and mapped a European response to the UK referendum.
Chaired by
Mark Leonard, Director, ECFR
Tim Oliver, Dahrendorf Fellow, LSE
Moderated by:
Almut Möller, Senior Policy Fellow and Head of ECFR Berlin
British voters will decide over their country’s EU membership 23 June. How could the EU and its members prepare for the result of the referendum? And what if Britain leaves? What does it need to be equipped to deal with the immediate and longer-term implications of a “Brexit”? How and with what kind of messages should the EU
respond the morning after the vote?
ECFR and Stiftung Mercator convened a small group of Europeans to discuss implications for the EU and its members should the British voters decide for Britain to leave the EU in the referendum. They discussed the implications of such an outcome and explored how the Union and its members, including the UK, could send a signal of joint ownership for the implications that this choice will have for EU politics and policies. Is there a way of sending a signal of togetherness rather than parting, and what would it look like? What is Europe’s response to the UK leaving the formal EU structures?