The force that drove the Brexit
The United Kingdom (UK) joined the European Union (EU) in 1973, and a withdrawal from the EU is a right for the EU member states. Article 50 of Treaty of Lisbon states, ''any Member State may decide to withdraw from the Union in accordance with its own constitutional requirements''. Likewise, on 23 June 2016, the UK held a referendum to decide whether it should remain or leave the EU. The "Leave" vote won by 52% to 48%.
Since then, there have been many different interpretations about the reasons for leaving the EU. Though, I conclude only one interpretation, which in my opinion is the fundamental reason behind the Brexit; it is concentrated behind the principle of ''state-sovereignty''.
Similarly, the Kurdish case for referendum may be similar to the UK referendum, when the matter comes to the ''state-sovereignty''. Kurdistan Region of Iraq (KRI) is also due to hold a referendum to decide whether the region should remain within the state of Iraq as a federal entity or should it dissociate from Iraq as a new independent country.
However, to understand the reasons behind the crucial decision for both nations, I will try to explain the case of the UK's referendum, because each scenario leads to another.
There are also two different perspectives to explain what we mean by the term ''state-sovereignty'' in reference to EU membership; both the legal explanation and the political explanation.
The legal explanation is that to become a member state of EU, it would call the doctrine of ''parliamentary-supremacy'' and ''judicially-supremacy'' of the state into question. According to the EU regulations and rules, every member is obligated to adopt or apply the EU regulations and instructions into national provisions.
The EU legal acts are directly applicable or automatically incorporated into domestic law as soon as they passed. The reason for this binding relationship between the EU and the member states is that if the state were free to ignore EU laws, the union would become entirely impotent. Therefore, the EU law is to take precedent over the domestic law of the UK.
In addition, the decisions by the European Court of Justice (ECJ), override the decisions of national courts of the member states; even the High Court or the House of Parliament in the UK for example. Once the ECJ has provided a ruling, it will refer the case back to domestic court and the ruling is always followed by national courts of the state member.
The political explanation is that the states under the EU policy have limited power on the decisions and the policies made by the union, which are legally binding, even when these decisions contradict with the national policies of some member states.
For instant, in the last few months, Angela Markel, the Chancellor of Germany, has insisted of hosting a significant number of refugees by EU and threatened sanctions against the states for the migrant chaos; consequently, this incident has reflected within the politicians inside the UK.
Thus, it seems that for the UK, the EU problem has been more than an open market or economic strategy. The leave camp argued that EU regulations have restricted the government’s power and control over its institutions. Further, it has, they claimed, affected the supremacy of its legal system and sovereignty of its foreign policy.
All of the above-mentioned issues can be described in one word, which is ''state-sovereignty''. Due to this influence on the UK's sovereignty, politicians took actions against this situation, which ultimately led to the referendum.
In the same manner, the Kurdish referendum seems to have the same objective as the UK' referendum. Both countries seek to free themselves from outside authorities that legally bind them and politically limit their power. Distinctly, the KRI is legally ad politically bound by Iraqi central government, under the Iraqi constitution.
Daban Sabir holds an LLM in Law
The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the position of Kurdistan24.
Editing by Delovan Barwari