The Legal Architecture of De-Europeanisation: Managing Border Conflicts after Brexit

Skoutaris, Nikos ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5998-7319 (2026) The Legal Architecture of De-Europeanisation: Managing Border Conflicts after Brexit. JCMS-Journal of Common Market Studies. ISSN 0021-9886 (In Press)

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Abstract

Scholarship on the Europeanisation of border conflicts explains how closer integration can transform them. This article addresses the reverse case. It examines how the EU and the UK have managed the de-Europeanisation of three border conflicts – Northern Ireland, Gibraltar and the UK Sovereign Base Areas in Cyprus – through the Withdrawal Agreement Protocols and the Agreement on Gibraltar. Three legal techniques recur: sovereignty disclaimers that quarantine the underlying territorial disputes; the extraterritorial application of EU law to keep contested borders functionally invisible; and bespoke governance mechanisms for institutional oversight and dispute resolution. Each is calibrated to the intensity of the underlying sovereignty dispute and the depth of integration required to prevent border hardening. The article enriches the literature on differentiated disintegration with an account of its territorial and conflict-related dimensions, and recasts the neo-functional peace as a method of conflict management capable of operating in either direction.

Item Type:	Article
Uncontrolled Keywords:	de-europeanisation,brexit,border conflicts,differentiated disintegration,neo-functional peace,northern ireland,good friday agreement,cyprus,gibraltar,withdrawal agreement,sdg 16 - peace, justice and strong institutions,4*,by identifying three legal techniques that recur across northern ireland, gibraltar, and the sovereign base areas, the article provides the first systematic framework for understanding de-europeanisation as a managed legal process. its reconceptualisation of neo-functional peace as a technique of conflict management detachable from integration — capable of operating in reverse — is a concise, falsifiable theoretical claim that reshapes an established concept and opens a new scholarly agenda. ,/dk/atira/pure/sustainabledevelopmentgoals/peace_justice_and_strong_institutions
Faculty \ School:	Faculty of Social Sciences > School of Law
UEA Research Groups:	Faculty of Social Sciences > Research Groups > International Law
Depositing User:	LivePure Connector
Date Deposited:	14 Sep 2026 15:03
Last Modified:	14 Sep 2026 15:03
URI:	https://ueaeprints.uea.ac.uk/id/eprint/104519
DOI:	issn:0021-9886

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