European Union (EU) finally agreed to back the deadline for the United Kingdom (UK) process to leave the EU or Brexit until 31 January 2020. Therefore, three times the EU has postponed the Brexit deadline from the beginning on 31 March 2019 to 31 October 2019, and now in early 2020. The Brexit agreement has not been reached due to political friction in the UK. After being sworn in to replace Theresa May, the new Prime Minister Boris Johnson is actually determined to expel Britain from the EU according to the deadline on October 31, 2019 no matter what. However, Boris Johnson was forced to break his promise because parliamentarians urged him to postpone Brexit.
As previously known, Brexit emerged from the results of a referendum held on June 23, 2016, where all citizens of sufficient age were allowed to vote. This referendum gives two choices, remain or leave the EU. As a result, leave got 51.9% of the votes, remain 48.1% of the votes. The referendum was attended by 71.8% of the voting age population, or more than 30 million people who voted including England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. In the England Brexit won 53.4% versus 46.6%, as did Wales 52.5% against 47.5%. However, Scotland chose remain with a sizable advantage of 62% versus 38%, just as Northern Ireland wanted to remain with the EU 55.8% against 44.2%. After totaling, leave wins over the remain.
The original deadline for UK scheduled to leave the EU is March 29, 2019 or two years after the enactment of Article 50 EU Treaty of Lisbon on how to exit the bloc. Based on the procedure in the application of Article 50, the member country is required to notify the European Council and will be given a period of up to two years to negotiate the terms and conditions of the country’s discharge, after which all agreements between that country and the European Union will cease to apply.
However, the problem is the agreement between the EU and the UK on Brexit was rejected three times by the UK parliament itself. EU leaders then agreed to delay Brexit until 12 April 2019. However, British Prime Minister Theresa May again requested an extension until 30 June and was approved by the British parliament. On Wednesday 10 April 2019, the EU approved a new deadline of 31 October 2019. Then it was extended again to 31 January 2020 after political friction in the UK Parliament during Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s reign.
This also led to many predictions of the possibility that Brexit could be canceled. Efforts to cancel Brexit can be done with changes to the law, but the government and opposition parties are not ready to do so at this time. On 10 December 2018 the European Court ruled that Britain could cancel Article 50 without asking permission from 27 other EU members, and remain a member of the EU provided it goes through a democratic process in parliament. Last month, an online petition demanding that Article 50 be revoked had more than 6 million signatures.
Efforts to re-vote related to the ratification of the law of resignation from the European Union (Brexit) have also been carried out by Prime Minister Boris Johnson. However, the lower house of the British Parliament rejected Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s proposal because legislators had agreed to postpone the deadline for discussing the Brexit agreement until Saturday, 26 October 2019. Then, the parliament also banned re-voting of the same proposal if there were no changes on the law. Meanwhile, the EU continues to urge the UK that Brexit must be implemented with an agreement to avoid adverse impacts on the economy on both sides.
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