Beautiful Virgin Islands

Thursday, Oct 30, 2025

Does the EU understand what sovereignty really means?

Does the EU understand what sovereignty really means?

The UK never tried to have our constitution written in one big session. We made it up by responding to each crisis when it happened. Brexit is just the latest.
The remaining sticking points on a deal are fish and something called the level playing field. Fish is very interesting, I assume, but it is politics, not law. So, as a lawyer who chooses not to speak on politics (some do), fish is none of my business.

But the Level Playing Field (LPF) – which is a legal problem – is. It is the elephant in the room. And yet the EU's response to this issue is deeply unhelpful.

Rightly or wrongly, the public voted for Brexit. Brexit is about sovereignty and sovereignty is a legal question. The EU does not accept the same definition that everyone who is not the EU uses: freedom to make your own law. It is hard for us lawyers to define sovereignty any other way. While we were in the EU, sovereignty was pooled; they had some, we had some. A political choice was made to do that.

Then, there were lots of debates in 2015. They rightly focused on the political question which is: ‘Do we want to pool our sovereignty with the EU or not?’.

What it seems the EU has been doing for the last 54 months is to put differently coloured hats on the elephant in the room that is sovereignty in the hope it goes away. That seemed unlikely to work.

Losing sovereignty; losing the freedom to make laws, or even the freedom to copy someone else’s laws if you choose to, is an oddity of the EU. Plenty of people have tried to blame Boris Johnson for his intransigence in Brexit talks. But when it comes to the issue of sovereignty it is hard to fault him for sticking to his guns.

he issue is this. Some of the businesses in the UK want to trade with the EU. Those ones will obey EU law to do so. If we are sovereign, then the ones that don’t want to trade with the EU would not obey EU law. The UK might voluntarily copy EU law – that is actually quite common, but the EU couldn’t make us.

Now the EU is trying the same strategy – putting a different hat on the elephant. Every new hat gets more elaborate and it is extremely complex by even my standards of complexity. Each hat has a collection of accompanying letters to describe it. If the purpose of law is to be plain and read by everyone, and it is, then LPF is what I would describe to a judge as 'unhelpful'. It is, in every version, not sovereignty. The hat gets increasingly fancy – the elephant remains.

Whether you can live with that or not is a political opinion. I care only about law. The law protects you from having to tell me your political opinions. If I am being politically neutral, then this is the point at which I stop talking.

It is only if you say, 'I don’t want this elephant in my room' that lawyers like me must speak. If my client made such a demand, I would calmly explain the legal options to remove the elephant. If you are a country, like the UK, then you can remove any elephant anytime. The people who put the elephant in your room might not like it. But if they don't, that's a matter for politicians, not lawyers.

The elephant of the EU’s idiosyncratic view of sovereignty has been in the room for some time. The vote did not shift it. And the aftermath of the referendum – and the endless Brexit talks – have highlighted that on the issue of sovereignty, it is the EU which is behaving oddly.

If that looks like I am taking a political view, I’m not, we have ignored this elephant for 47 years. Until anyone asks me to deal with it, I shall simply compliment it upon its new hat.
Newsletter

Related Articles

Beautiful Virgin Islands
0:00
0:00
Close
UK and Vietnam Sign Landmark Migration Deal to Fast-Track Returns of Irregular Arrivals
UK Drug-Pricing Overhaul Essential for Life-Sciences Ambition, Says GSK Chief
Princesses Beatrice and Eugenie Temporarily Leave the UK Amid Their Parents’ Royal Fallout
UK Weighs Early End to Oil and Gas Windfall Tax as Reeves Seeks Investment Commitments
UK Retail Inflation Slows as Shop Prices Fall for First Time Since Spring
Next Raises Full-Year Profit Guidance After Strong Third-Quarter Performance
Reform UK’s Lee Anderson Admits to 'Gaming' Benefits System While Advocating Crackdown
United States and South Korea Conclude Major Trade Accord Worth $350 Billion
Hurricane Melissa Strikes Cuba After Devastating Jamaica With Record Winds
Vice President Vance to Headline Turning Point USA Campus Event at Ole Miss
U.S. Targets Maritime Narco-Routes While Border Pressure to Mexico Remains Limited
Bill Gates at 70: “I Have a Real Fear of Artificial Intelligence – and Also Regret”
Elon Musk Unveils Grokipedia: An AI-Driven Alternative to Wikipedia
Saudi Arabia Unveils Vision for First-Ever "Sky Stadium" Suspended Over Desert Floor
Amazon Announces 14 000 Corporate Job Cuts as AI Investment Accelerates
UK Shop Prices Fall for First Time Since March, Food Leads the Decline
London Stock Exchange Group ADR (LNSTY) Earns Zacks Rank #1 Upgrade on Rising Earnings Outlook
Soap legend Tony Adams, long-time star of Crossroads, dies at 84
Rachel Reeves Signals Tax Increases Ahead of November Budget Amid £20-50 Billion Fiscal Gap
NatWest Past Gains of 314% Spotlight Opportunity — But Some Key Risks Remain
UK Launches ‘Golden Age’ of Nuclear with £38 Billion Sizewell C Approval
UK Announces £1.08 Billion Budget for Offshore Wind Auction to Boost 2030 Capacity
UK Seeks Steel Alliance with EU and US to Counter China’s Over-Capacity
UK Struggles to Balance China as Both Strategic Threat and Valued Trading Partner
Argentina’s Markets Surge as Milei’s Party Secures Major Win
British Journalist Sami Hamdi Detained by U.S. Authorities After Visa Revocation Amid Israel-Gaza Commentary
King Charles Unveils UK’s First LGBT+ Armed Forces Memorial at National Memorial Arboretum
At ninety-two and re-elected: Paul Biya secures eighth term in Cameroon amid unrest
Racist Incidents Against UK Nurses Surge by 55%
UK Chancellor Rachel Reeves Cites Shared Concerns With Trump Administration as Foundation for Early US-UK Trade Deal
Essentra plc: A Closer Look at a UK ‘Penny Stock’ Opportunity Amid Market Weakness
U.S. and China Near Deal to Avert Rare-Earth Export Controls Ahead of Trump-Xi Summit
Justin time: Justin Herbert Shields Madison Beer with Impressive Reflex at Lakers Game
Russia’s President Putin Declares Burevestnik Nuclear Cruise Missile Ready for Deployment
Giuffre’s Memoir Alleges Maxwell Claimed Sexual Act with Clooney
House Republicans Move to Strip NYC Mayoral Front-Runner Zohran Mamdani of U.S. Citizenship
Record-High Spoiled Ballots Signal Voter Discontent in Ireland’s 2025 Presidential Election
Philippines’ Taal Volcano Erupts Overnight with 2.4 km Ash Plume
Albania’s Virtual AI 'Minister' Diella Set to 'Birth' Eighty-Three Digital Assistants for MPs
Tesla Unveils Vision for Optimus V3 as ‘Biggest Product of All Time’, Including Surgical Capabilities
Francis Ford Coppola Auctions Luxury Watches After Self-Financed Film Flop
Convicted Sex Offender Mistakenly Freed by UK Prison Service Arrested in London
United States and China Begin Constructive Trade Negotiations Ahead of Trump–Xi Summit
U.S. Treasury Sanctions Colombia’s President Gustavo Petro over Drug-Trafficking Allegations
Miss USA Crowns Nebraska’s Audrey Eckert Amid Leadership Overhaul
‘I Am Not Done’: Kamala Harris Signals Possible 2028 White House Run
NBA Faces Integrity Crisis After Mass Arrests in Gambling Scandal
Swift Heist at the Louvre Sees Eight French Crown Jewels Stolen in Under Seven Minutes
U.S. Halts Trade Talks with Canada After Ontario Ad Using Reagan Voice Triggers Diplomatic Fallout
Microsoft AI CEO: ‘We’re making an AI that you can trust your kids to use’ — but can Microsoft rebuild its own trust before fixing the industry’s?
×