Withdrawal from the European Union is a right of European Union (EU) member states under TEU Article 50: "Any Member State may decide to withdraw from the Union in accordance with its own constitutional requirements." No state has ever withdrawn, though some dependent territories or semi-autonomous areas have left. Of these, only Greenland has explicitly voted to leave, departing from the EU's predecessor, the European Economic Community (EEC), in 1985. No member state has ever held a national referendum on withdrawal from the European Union, though in 1975 the United Kingdom held a national referendum on withdrawal from its predecessor, the EEC; 67.2% of voters chose to remain in the Community.
Read more about Withdrawal From The European Union: Procedure, Past Withdrawals, Future Withdrawals and Major Withdrawal Campaigns, Break-up of A Member State, Suspension
Famous quotes containing the words withdrawal, european and/or union:
“A bizarre sensation pervades a relationship of pretense. No truth seems true. A simple morning’s greeting and response appear loaded with innuendo and fraught with implications.... Each nicety becomes more sterile and each withdrawal more permanent.”
—Maya Angelou (b. 1928)
“The Indian is one of Nature’s gentlemen—he never says or does a rude or vulgar thing. The vicious, uneducated barbarians, who form the surplus of overpopulous European countries, are far behind the wild man in delicacy of feeling or natural courtesy.”
—Susanna Moodie (1803–1885)
“These semi-traitors [Union generals who were not hostile to slavery] must be watched.—Let us be careful who become army leaders in the reorganized army at the end of this Rebellion. The man who thinks that the perpetuity of slavery is essential to the existence of the Union, is unfit to be trusted. The deadliest enemy the Union has is slavery—in fact, its only enemy.”
—Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1822–1893)