Professor Alan Dashwood’s Inaugural Lecture

The United Kingdom in a Re-Formed European Union

Plans are afoot for the Member States of the Euro-Group to come together in a fiscal and banking union and ultimately in a political union in which, it seems likely, the United Kingdom will not wish to be included.

This lecture will explore the possible constitutional arrangements under which the European Union might be re-formed so as to accommodate the new reality of a more highly integrated "core" and a less integrated "periphery". What guarantees could the UK secure that its vital interests would be safeguarded if it remained an EU Member State under such conditions? Rather than accepting second-class status as a peripheral member, could a rational case be made for the UK to leave the Union and negotiate a different legal relationship, such as membership of the European Economic Area? Are there reasons why the other Member States might be willing to make concessions in order to ensure the United Kingdom's continued membership?

Alan Dashwood became a part-time Professor of Law at City University in January 2012. He was Professor of European Law at the University of Cambridge from 1995 to 2009 and is now Professor Emeritus. He is a Fellow, now Emeritus, of Sidney Sussex College. He is also a Barrister in Henderson Chambers, a Bencher of the Inner Temple and took Silk in 2010. He specialises in the law of the European Union, and appears regularly in proceedings before the Court of Justice of the EU. 

Before election to his Chair at Cambridge, he was a Director in the Legal Service of the Council of the EU. He was the founding Editor of European Law Review and was one of the Joint Editors of Common Market Law Review until December 2008. He is a co-author of Wyatt and Dashwood's European Union Law, the sixth edition of which appeared in 2011, and contributes frequently to legal periodicals. At the invitation of the FCO, he led a team of Cambridge lawyers in drafting a model EU Constitution, as a contribution to the work of the Convention on the Future of Europe. He was appointed CBE in 2004.    

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