Especially on occasion of the judgment R (Miller) -v– Secretary of State for exiting the European Union, issued by the High Court on November 3 (on which see Martinico), some have started considering whether the UK may revoke its withdrawal from the Union after having notified it pursuant to Art. 50 TEU. The main argument put forward by the advocates of this idea is that, since revocation is not expressly forbidden, it should be available to the UK. Others may add to this view that revocation would be consistent with the principle to preserve treaties from being terminated.

Brexit opens totally new scenarios not only for politicians, but also for legal scholars. And all opinions deserve the greatest attention. Yet, I think that a deeper scrutiny of this option leads to different conclusions.

In fact, the issue concerning revocability of Brexit has been advanced especially within the constitutional debate internal to the UK legal order, and was mainly justified to temporarily overcome the dilemma whether Brexit can be validly notified by the UK Government alone, or a prior vote by the UK Parliament is required. In this sense, if revocation were possible, the above dilemma might be solved after Brexit having been notified by Rt Hon Theresa May; subsequently, the UK institutions would have time to solve their constitutional conundrum. The legal dispute might indeed be decided soon by the UK Supreme Court in the Article 50 ‘Brexit’ appeal (the hearing began on December 5, 2016 and a judgment is awaited); however, the debate on revocation has crossed the UK borders and is being analysed also from the international legal plane. Doubts have hence arisen whether Brexit might be revoked during the notice period running between the withdrawal notification to the European Council and the subsequent two years (or the extra-period unanimously decided pursuant to the same TEU provision), as per Article 50.3 TEU.