Ben Bradshaw – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Foreign and Commonwealth Office

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Ben Bradshaw on 2016-05-20.

To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, what assessment he has made of whether UK citizens would retain ownership rights over property elsewhere in the EU during the period prior to the completion of Article 50 negotiations relating to the Lisbon Treaty in the event of the UK voting to leave the EU.

Mr David Lidington

The procedure governing a country’s departure from the EU is set out in Article 50 of the Treaty on European Union. This provides for a period of two years for the negotiation of exit terms. EU laws would continue to apply to the departing Member State until the Article 50 agreement had entered into force, or for two years if no agreement had been reached and no extension to the two year period had been granted. A request for an extension could only be granted with the unanimous agreement of the remaining Member States.