Legal action over whether the UK can reverse Brexit gets go ahead

Scotland's highest civil courts is to hear a legal action to establish whether the UK could reverse Brexit without needing agreement from Brussels.

The case has been raised by seven pro-Europe MPs, MEPs and MSPs from four parties in Scotland.

They want to ask the Court of Session in Edinburgh to refer the issue to the European Court of Justice in Luxembourg for a ruling on whether the UK can change its mind and halt the Article 50 process without the approval of the other 27 member states if voters decide the final deal is unacceptable.

The Scottish court could choose to throw out the argument, or agree to pass it on to the ECJ. A crowdfunding campaign to pay for the cross-party group’s legal costs has already passed its £50,000 target.  

It said in a recent statement that many experts believe the UK can choose to stay in the EU without permission, but the only way to be sure is for a court to decide what Article 50 means.

The statement added: “And because Article 50 must mean the same thing to everyone, a national court can’t give the answer.

“Only the specialist European Court in Luxembourg can interpret Article 50 definitively. So we will ask the Court of Session in Scotland to ‘refer’ it to Luxembourg. This is the only way to give our Parliament the best negotiating hand. To maximise its power if the right choice is to stick with what we have.”

The petition will now be served on the UK Government, which has 21 days to respond.

The signatories are Christine Jardine, a Lib Dem MP, the SNP MP Joanna Cherry, David Martin and Catherine Stihler, Scottish Labour MEPs, Andy Wightman and Ross Greer, both Scottish Green MSPs, and the SNP MEP, Alyn Smith.

Michel Barnier, the EU’s chief negotiator, said this week that any decision to abandon Brexit needed agreement from all 27 states.

But Jolyon Maugham QC, who is coordinating the legal action through his campaign group the Good Law Project, told the Guardian he believed there was a clear case for giving the UK parliament the right to unilaterally cancel Brexit.

The case also received a boost from Jean-Claude Piris, former head of the EU council’s legal service, who wrote on Twitter this week that Article 50 was based on the principle that withdrawing from the EU was a unilateral decision and nobody could force a state to leave.

In its response to an initial letter on the planned action, the UK Government denied it had formally supported M Barnier’s stance that the article 50 process could not be stopped unilaterally.

The office of the advocate general, the UK government’s Scottish law officer, said: “For the avoidance of doubt, the public position we do recognise having taken is that the stated and consistent position of the government has been, and is, that the UK’s notification under article 50 (2) will not be withdrawn. This is clearly long established and consistent and discloses no basis for legal challenge.” - The Telegraph