A Brexit last call: The strange practice of pre-Brexit opt-ins

Abstract

As long as the UK’s membership in the EU lasted, it had a special position within the Union. This could be seen particularly well in a peculiar practice that has largely gone unnoticed in the public, namely a series of opt-in decisions that the UK took prior to Brexit but after the Brexit referendum. This contribution raises the question of whether the UK used the pre-Brexit period as a type of ‘last call’, trying to get everything it could of its membership before it ended. To do so, it studies five opt-in decisions, examining their subject matter, the effects of the opt-ins and the outcome of the Brexit negotiations in order to understand the UK’s reasons for integrating further into the EU before withdrawing from it. Uncovering various political and practical motivations, it comes to the conclusion that the initial impression of a ‘last call behaviour’ is not justified.