Thread by @akulith

Chain continues!
25. Article 50 TEU (withdrawals from the EU) is the mirror provision of Article 49 TEU (accessions to the EU). Article 49 TEU served as the legal base for the 2011 Treaty of Accession of Croatia to the European Union.

26. Croatia was joining at a date (1 July 2013) that did not happen to coincide with the date for holding EP elections. However, as soon as Croatia was a Member State, it needed to have democratic representation in the EP.

27. The solution adopted was to use the Treaty of Accession, based on Article 49 TEU, to make the necessary adjustments to the EU Treaties to deal with inter alia this problem.

28. An entire provision – Article 19 – was devoted to increasing membership of the EP so as to accommodate Croatian MEPs before the date of the next EP elections. In so doing, the Parties derogated from otherwise mandatory Treaty provisions.

29. One way of ensuring continuing UK representation in the EP during an Article 50 extension might therefore be for the UK to agree with the EU just to extend the mandates of the UK MEPs who have already been democratically elected and who have been sitting in the current EP.

30. Another possible solution might be to revert to the (old Parliamentary Assembly) practice of sending nominated MPs from the UK, rather than directly elected MEPs, to participate in the EP during that period.

31. No doubt other mechanisms could be envisaged also. What would be necessary would be to ensure that the EU-27 could go ahead and elect a new EP as scheduled, and to arrange for the British MEPs to sit in that new EP as additional members on a temporary ‘Brexit-limited’ basis.

32. I am naturally not advocating any particular mechanism or any particular course of action. But if the political will to agree a longer Article 50 TEU extension is there, a legal mechanism can be found to accommodate that desire and ‘deal with’ the issue of the EP elections.

33. That’s it. Sorry this chain is so ridiculously long. Please feel free to RT.