Faculty of law blogs / UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD

Pulling the Article 50 ‘Trigger’: Parliament’s Indispensable Role

Posted

Time to read

2 Minutes

Nicholas Barber, Associate Professor of Constitutional Law, posted on the UK Constitutional Law Association Blog with Tom Hickman, Reader in Public Law at UCL and Barrister at Blackstone Chambers and Jeff King, Senior Lecturer at the Faculty of Laws, UCL. In their post, ‘Pulling the Article 50 ‘Trigger’: Parliament’s Indispensable Role’ they argue that the Prime Minister is constitutionally unable to issue a notification triggering the UK’s withdrawal from the European Union without having been first authorised to do so by an Act of the United Kingdom Parliament.  Were he to attempt to do so without statutory authority, the purported notification would be legally ineffective as a matter of domestic law and it would thus also fail to comply with the requirements of Article 50 of the Treaty on European Union itself.

Share