Assignment on What does Brexit mean?

Running head: BREXIT
Brexit
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author Note

BREXIT
What are the likely effects of Brexit on the UK economy?
Brief history of EU:
European Union (EU) formed in the year 1973, was a political body that eliminated
boundaries among the countries that were the part of the union. It allowed free trade among
its members to enhance global market competition. By the year 2004. the union added 15
more states and became a union of 28 member states. The purpose of the union was to
stabilize the requirements of its independent fiscal and political members. Countries that are
part of the EU are, Bulgaria, Croatia, Austria, Belgium, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Finland,
France, Denmark, Estonia, Hungary, Ireland, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Italy, Latvia, Greece,
Malta, Netherlands, Romania, Germany, Slovakia, Poland, Portugal, Slovenia, Sweden,
Spain, and the United Kingdom (Chalmers et.al 2019). It was in the year 1973 when the
United Kingdom joined the European Union. UK would be the first country to leave the
European Union.
The British Prime Minister David Cameron in his speech on 23rd January 2013
announces his intentions on the position of United Kingdom in the European Union (Berthou
et al. 2019). The exit campaign was led by the leaders Nigel Firage and Boris Johnson. There
were two campaigns, one that wanted the United Kingdom to stay in the European Union and
the other that wanted the United Kingdom to exit the European Union. In the year 2016 after
3.5 years, on June 23rd a referendum was passed a majority vote with a narrow margin to exit
the British from the European Union. The turnout of the referendum was very high with
almost 30 million people voting for Bexit out of which 17.1 million voted for its exit from the
European Union (Colantone and Stanig 2018). The very next day David Cameron due to this
result resigns from the post of the prime minister. Theresa May, on July 2016 was elected as
the new prime minister of the United Kingdom. On March 2017 Theresa May submits the

BREXIT
official letter stating the British exit from the EU. This was the beginning of the negotiation
period, from 23rd march 2017 to 23rd march 2019. Brexit was due to happen on March 2019
after the two year negotiation period where the formal process to leave and kick off the
negotiations would take place. The deadline was pushed to October 2019 from March 2019
because the MPs failed to pass the revised Brexit into law (Schoof 2015). Theresa May
resigns as a chairman of the UK replaced by Johnson, who eventually takes the position of
the prime minister of the United Kingdom too. He seeks another extension to the revised
Brexit deal and the deadline was set to 31st January 2020.
Challenges facing the UK as a member of the European Union:
The membership amount of being the member of the European Union was a big value
which the United Kingdom was unable to recover. Other reason was the formalities and paper
work it has to go through while taking any decision or deciding a policy. Immigration has
increased above the permissible limit that was one lakh (Chalmers et al. 2019). Some major
challenges faced by the UK as a member of the European Union are as follows:
 Challenges regarding immigration- The UK will make all possible efforts in
reducing immigration from the EU, which will be similar to the points-based system
of Australia. This system means that it gives priority to the high skilled workers and
stops the entry to any low-skilled labourers. Thus, many jobseekers that are from EU
may be asked to leave. However, the UK will first have to clarify the status of the EU
workers who are approximately 2.2 million in number and living in UK. The rules
involving reunions of family may get complicated although there would be no
blockage of freedom in the movement for at least two years, while the UK negotiates
Brexit. There are many UK nationals who also reside abroad in EU countries which
account to almost two million (Riley and Ghilès 2016). Therefore, any measures taken