Brexit transition headache has EEA painkiller fix

LONDON: The UK's Brexit transition quandary might have a workaround. Courts could rule that when Britain quits the European Union it can stay part of the European Economic Area, a wider group that includes Norway, Iceland and Liechtenstein.

Properly handled, it could help Britain disentangle itself from the EU without shooting itself in the foot.

One of the biggest headaches for UK negotiators is a two-year countdown to exit once the government gives formal notice of its intention to leave, as Prime Minister Theresa May has pledged to do by March 2017.

Comparatively simple negotiations - including tiny Greenland's exit in the 1980s - took much longer than two years to conclude, so it seems certain that the UK needs a transitional arrangement to avoid a "cliff-edge" scenario where it leaves without new trade agreements in place.

A new court case could help. The think tank British Influence is planning to contest the government's position that Brexit means automatically leaving the EEA, which gives members access to the single market.

If the challenge succeeds, the UK could fall back on EEA membership as a temporary remedy once the two-year clock is up, rather than striking a transitional arrangement with Europe from scratch. Doing so would merely require Europe to not disagree, rather than thrash out a specific transition period which could prompt criticism at home.

The rub is that hardline Brexiteers would find continuing EEA membership hard to swallow, because it curtails the government's ability to control immigration.

This group views anything less than a clean, quick break as a betrayal of the narrow majority that voted to leave.

There's a simple enough compromise. May is already facing a legal challenge over her ability to trigger the start of Brexit, which could see her forced to give lawmakers in parliament a vote on the matter.

She could attach a clause to any parliamentary bill guaranteeing that the UK will leave the EEA at a specific point in the future.

Assuming the process of Brexit kicks off in March 2017 at the latest, an EEA exit date of 2025 would give negotiators a more realistic timetable than the current two years - and a chance that an EU-less UK is something other than a corpse.