Scotland and the EU: Comment by KALYPSO NICOLAIDIS

Abstract

With the Treaty of Lisbon, the EU formalised and entrenched a right of exit (article 50) which is at the heart of its nature as a polity: the peoples of Europe have come together and will remain together by choice, not under duress. In the same way as the exit clause proclaims loudly and clearly that EU member states and their citizens remain in the EU by choice, leaving the EU should be a collective choice too. It should not be a choice inferred from another choice, that of one part of a country to leave the whole.