Professor Dagmar Schiek

The special issue, Vol 69 No 3, resulted from the “Brexit - 15 Months On” conference hosted at Queen’s University Belfast last September.

It features nine articles looking at EU citizenship, social and labour law and policy, and environmental protection from the perspective of the EU.

Writing in the introduction, Professor Dagmar Schiek of QUB School of Law said the issue aimed to fill a gap by providing perspectives which do not focus on the UK.

She wrote: “As we have seen, the Brexit debate is frequently focused on the future special relationship between this state and the EU.

“Even the two collections which … aspire to develop perspectives for the EU contain a substantive amount of debate focusing on how the UK can cope in the end with leaving the EU.

“While this certainly is very relevant, [Annette] Bongardt and [Francisco] Torres refreshingly state a simple truth: ‘Brexit is a priority for the UK. For the EU, it is a major and costly distraction from important common challenges.’”

She added: “This truth must not, however, distract from the fact that the UK’s withdrawal must be used as a chance to improve. Most importantly, the Union should use the opportunity to address popular discontent with its integration project on the one hand, and on the other hand tackle the thorny problem of coordinating policies which cannot stop at geographical borders through constructive engagement with the UK as a non-integrated close neighbour.”