No Deal Will Be the Worst Scenario: EU, UK Unprepared for Brexit - Lecturer

British Prime Minister Theresa May has set a deadline for a series of no-deal Brexit preparations to be triggered, despite having previously stood behind her Chequers plan? Would a no deal Brexit be a disaster as some have speculated?

Sputnik spoke with Dr Nikos Skoutaris, Senior Lecturer in EU Law at the University of East Anglia for more insight on the issue.

Sputnik: Do you think that a no deal Brexit would be better or worse than the Chequers plan, for both the EU and the UK?

Dr Nikos Skoutaris: I think that a no deal Brexit would be the worst possible scenario because it would create huge disturbances in the economies of both the EU and the UK.

I don’t think that either the EU or the UK are prepared for the no deal Brexit because we haven’t ever had a withdrawal of a member state from the EU, so it will be an unprecedented situation. It doesn’t seem that there is the infrastructure there to deal with it, so I think that a no deal Brexit will be the worst possible scenario.

EU citizens in the UK and UK citizens in the EU will be considered foreign nationals, and this will be the default position. This means that the legislative provisions that apply to third country nationals in the UK and in the EU will apply to them in the same way.

In that sense; it is possible that there could be some kind of requirement to have a visa, especially of you want to stay in the UK or the EU for long periods of time, however it is up to each and every member state including the UK to actually create a system whereby we will not need visas or other very heavy requirements from the EU or UK.

Sputnik: Do you think that the EU was ever likely to give the UK a good Brexit deal?

Dr Nikos Skoutaris: The EU will never give the UK a deal where the UK would be in a more privileged position than member states. There’s no possibility that the UK will get a deal where it will be in a better position than EU states in a legal point of view.

Whether they give a free trade deal is something that I think is possible, but a deal where the UK will cherry pick all the good aspects of being an EU member state and lose all the bad aspects, that’s out of the question.

Views and opinions expressed in this article are those of Dr Nikos Skoutaris and do not necessarily reflect those of Sputnik.