Abstract
Brexit and the UK’s withdrawal from the EU customs union and single market poses a multitude of economic and political as well as other challenges for Northern Ireland, much of which was encapsulated in the shared UK and EU commitments during the withdrawal negotiations to avoid a hard border on the island of Ireland and uphold the 1998 Belfast (‘Good Friday’) Agreement. Awareness of the challenges led to calls for ‘flexible and imaginative solutions’ and therefore the possibility at least of some form of differentiated withdrawal for Northern Ireland. This chapter considers the options that were proposed, the actual terms of withdrawal and some of the consequences of these for Northern Ireland, the island of Ireland, the UK, and the EU. In doing so, it notes the establishment of a new dimension to the study of differentiated integration, namely the differentiated treatment of a territorially and constitutionally specific region of a non-member state.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Title of host publication | Routledge Handbook of Differentiation in the European Union |
| Editors | Benjamin Leruth, Stefan Gänzle, Jarle Trondal |
| Publisher | Routledge |
| Chapter | 40 |
| Pages | 664-679 |
| Number of pages | 16 |
| Publication status | Published - 12 May 2022 |