Border conflicts and territorial differentiation after Brexit: The cases of Northern Ireland, Gibraltar and the UK Sovereign Base Areas in Cyprus

This chapter discusses the challenges that Brexit poses to three border conflicts. It argues that the decision of the UK to leave the single market and the customs union threatens the cross-border cooperation and as such creates tensions to the political and economic life of those societies. At the same time, the UK’s withdrawal from the EU questions the fragile balance that has been achieved on the question of sovereignty of those territories. The relevant legal arrangements that have been used aim at addressing this issue by providing for differentiated (extra)territorial application of EU law in those regions post-Brexit. In that way some continuity to their current EU legal status is achieved. However, while the idea of a differentiated Brexit has been accepted for the Sovereign Base Areas in Cyprus and Gibraltar, it has been vehemently rejected for Northern Ireland.