U.K. Parliament Votes to Extend Brexit Deadline

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March 14, 2019

It was the third straight day of possibly monumental change in the United Kingdom, as lawmakers voted to ask for an extension to the March 29 deadline that the country faces for leaving the European Union.

Brexit

As the result of a 2016 nationwide referendum, Prime Minister Theresa May has set in motion a series of actions that the U.K. needs to take. One of the most important has been to negotiate an agreement with the European Union (EU) on what will happen to agreements such as trade and immigration. The March 29 was the result of a two-year timeline that was set into motion in 2017.

Two days ago, Parliament voted down May's latest deal, saying that it didn't answer enough significant questions, such as what would Brexit, as the U.K.'s leaving the EU has come to be called, mean for the border between Northern Ireland, which is part of the U.K., and Ireland, which is a separate sovereign nation. At the moment, because Ireland and the U.K. are both part of the EU, the border between the two nations is considered "soft," meaning that goods and people who cross the border do not undergo the kinds of rigorous security checks that they would if they were traveling to non-EU countries, such as the United States.

Theresa May

Yesterday, Parliament voted not to leave the EU without a deal of some sort. Although they had rejected May's latest proposal, which was nowhere near the first such set of agreements hammered out between the Prime Minister and EU officials, lawmakers offered no hint as to what kind of deal they would accept. More troubling for May, Parliament came within two votes of passing a resolution that would have put control of the rest of the process in their hands, not hers.

May has said that she will push for a third vote on her already negotiated deal with the EU. The vote this week was the second time that Parliament has voiced its disapproval. Parliament can always add amendments to include important changes that might make it more palatable to enough members, although the vote this week was more than 150 votes against. Another option is for Parliament to vote to revoke their invocation of Article 50 of the EU charter, the legal mechanism that started the Brexit process two years ago. Lawmakers have so far been unwilling to do that because they feel bound by the results of the 2016 referendum, which was nonbinding and was very close.

Now that the preference is for extending the deadline (and lawmakers expressed no timeframe for that), May will make a formal request to EU officials at the European Council summit that begins on March 21. If they do not agree (and just one country's voting no would mean that they don't agree), then the March 29 deadline stands and the U.K. would leave the EU, with or without any kind of agreement.

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