Fabian Amtenbrink (50) and René Repasi (39) have been jointly and individually studying the legal, economic and political ramifications of Brexit for several years, starting even before the 2016 referendum. “Brexit is the dumbest idea since the Second World War. Nobody wins.”
TEXT: Marieke Poelmann
ILLUSTRATION: Margot Vlamings
This interview took place in July 2019, three months before the stipulated 31 October departure date, with or without an agreement. Since then, the departure date has moved to Friday January 31st.
On 23 June 2016, the UK voted to leave the European Union by a slim majority. “Since then, British and European negotiators have been trying to make the impossible possible,” says Amtenbrink. “While the UK have sought to reclaim the UK's sovereignty and maintain access to the EU's internal market, the EU have tried to protect the right to freedom of movement and avoid border controls between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland.” Impossible objectives, says Repasi, that ultimately led to a rejection of the withdrawal agreement by the UK House of Commons. “The danger of a no-deal Brexit is greater than ever before,” says Amtenbrink.
How did you meet?
Repasi: “We met in 2014, as fellow speakers at a conference in The Hague on the European Economic and Monetary Union. We began talking and discovered we had shared academic interests. Fabian was already a professor at Erasmus University so I set about moving to the Netherlands.”
Amtenbrink chips in: “We were in the process of setting up the European Research Centre for Economic and Financial Governance (EURO-CEFG), a collaboration between the universities of Leiden, Delft and Rotterdam, and had room for a postgraduate position that was a perfect fit for René. And so began our initial collaboration.”
“British and European negotiators have been trying to make the impossible possible.”
How did that lead to you researching Brexit?
Repasi: “At the EURO-CEFG, we investigated the legal, economic and political issues surrounding the European debt crisis. Early in 2016, we received a request from the European Parliament to investigate the ‘new settlement deal’ between the UK and the EU. So we began thinking about Brexit and its possible implications, before the actual referendum.”
How did you expect the referendum to go at the time?
Amtenbrink: “It’s easy to present yourself as clever after the fact by claiming you saw it coming, but you’d be lying. I didn’t foresee the possibility of a pro-Brexit majority until the day before the referendum. I was at an academic conference in the UK, and my British counterpart from the organising university was absent. When I asked where he was, I was told he was out distributing flyers to get people to vote Remain. That was when it dawned on me.”
“I didn't see it coming either,” says Repasi. “We prepared two blog posts for the EURO-CEFG the day before the referendum: one for each scenario. We simply couldn’t tell which way it would go.”
“The dissemination of falsehoods about the potential consequences of Brexit is a major problem in the UK.”
What were the main findings of your investigation?
Amtenbrink: “There are different elements to the findings and different scenarios: legal, economic and political. One major political implication of Brexit is of course that it runs counter to the idea of European integration. One could argue that the door was left ajar with the inclusion of Article 50 in the Treaty on European Union.
The dissemination of falsehoods about the potential consequences of Brexit is a major problem in the UK. It’s up to us, as academics, to set out the facts and figures and to analyse the real legal, economic and political consequences. For citizens, businesses, the government and the economy.”
“The overall picture suggests that things are going to get worse for everyone after Brexit,” adds Repasi. “It’s the dumbest idea since the Second World War, because nobody wins. The Brits will suffer, but so will the rest of Europe. The whole point of the EU was to avoid the potential consequences of our previous divisions. I’m not saying war is likely, but Brexit will be disastrous.”
What does Brexit mean for students?
“As we lawyers like to say,” says Amtenbrink, “it depends. We still don't know if the UK House of Commons will decide to accept the withdrawal agreement, or whether we’ll end up with a hard Brexit. In the first scenario, students' rights will remain the same until the end of 2020. A future UK-EU agreement will determine what happens afterwards. In the latter scenario, all the current rights of EU students in the UK and British students in the EU will end.”
“This is why both the EU and the Member States have passed emergency regulations,” says Repasi. “These measures cover and protect all students in exchange programmes on the day of Brexit right up until they complete their studies. EU funding is also guaranteed on condition that the UK pays its share of the EU budget in 2019.”
“The termination of exchange programmes for students and academics on account of Brexit will be a huge intellectual loss,” concludes Amtenbrink.
