International reactions to the 2016 United Kingdom European Union membership referendum
International reactions to the United Kingdom European Union membership referendum of 2016 are the reactions to the decision to leave the European Union by the United Kingdom. The main reaction was on global financial markets experiencing extreme volatility.
Media[edit]
The BBC, the British national broadcaster, highlighted uncertain reactions from the EU, Ireland and Greece.[121] characterising Britain's plan to leave the European Union as "utter disruption" that could result in a "domino effect." North Korea's Rodong Sinmun wrote an editorial that called the result as "causing problems."[122] Sweden's Dagens Nyheter and Dagens Industri questioned the decision to hold a referendum. The latter's political editor P. M. Nilsson wrote, in an editorial, that "democracy is greater than the power of the people...[the result clearly showed that] the democratic aspirations of the international cooperation such as the EU should be reduced. At present, the key question should not be how people could get more power from the EU, but rather how to protect the EU, together with its member states, from such expressions of people's power."
Academia[edit]
In the article "Britain's Democratic Failure", Professor Kenneth Rogoff of Harvard University wrote "This isn’t democracy; it is Russian roulette for republics. A decision of enormous consequence ... has been made without any appropriate checks and balances ... The idea that somehow any decision reached anytime by majority rule is necessarily “democratic” is a perversion of the term. Modern democracies have evolved systems of checks and balances to protect the interests of minorities and to avoid making uninformed decisions with catastrophic consequences."[123]
Professor Michael Dougan of Liverpool University and Jean Monnet Chair of EU Law said "On virtually every major issue that was raised in this referendum debate Leave’s arguments consisted of at best misrepresentations and at worst outright deception" and that the Leave campaign was "criminally irresponsible" [124]
Khaled al-Hroub, a senior research fellow at the Faculty of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies at the University of Cambridge said: "In theory, the UK's influence on the EU policies vis-à-vis Arab issues such as Palestine, Syria and Iraq will end - which is not necessarily a bad thing to have. The British used to pull the EU in the direction of more Americanised positions and politics. Relieving the EU from British pressure could be seen as a good sign that allows for more independent European standing on Arab affairs."[68]