Brexit – Will it Affect You?

Thursday 23rd June 2016. The day that the United Kingdom decided to leave the European Union. 

The United Kingdom has today announced that it will leave the European Union. The events of yesterday and today mean that the existing trade agreements with other EU members will have to be renegotiated. We are expecting very little change to our industry both short and long term, so it will be business as usual here at Keenweb Hosting.

It’s come as no surprise today that we’ve been inundated with questions from our customers as to what will happen now, so we thought we’d put together this overview of what happens next.

In terms of Britain exiting from the EU, there is a minimum 2-year negotiation period. UK Prime Minister, David Cameron has this morning announced his resignation which will take effect in October. Once the new Prime Minister has been appointed, they will then have to instruct the activation of Article 50 – this won’t happen until October 2016 at the earliest.

What Is Article 50? 

The Treaty on European Union (Article 50) which allows a member state to notify the EU of its withdrawal and obliges the EU to try to negotiate a ‘withdrawal agreement’ with that state. You can read more about Article 50 and what it involves by clicking here.

Once Article 50 has been activated, there follows a 2-year negotiation period. During this time, the UK will negotiate with the European Commission on an exit strategy that will cover all aspects of trade, commerce, immigration, employment law and so on. The end game for the 2-year period is to agree terms that the UK and all existing EU member states agree to.

During this period, EU laws still apply to the UK and UK businesses and residents will continue to participate within EU as normal.

At the end of this period, if an agreement has not been reached the UK can force a withdrawal agreement. If this happens, EU treaties will cease to apply to the UK or, providing there is an unanimous agreement, the negotiating period can be extended.

How Does This Affect Your Future Service From Us? 

We are very pleased that for 95% of our customers, the UK exit from the EU will have absolutely no impact – either now or in the future. For our Dedicated Private Servers customers, we may see some changes. However, these will not be for at least 2 years and ultimately will probably have zero impact as Britain remains trading within the single market.

Rest assured, customers can feel confident in the fact that we will be monitoring the situation very closely – and making any necessary changes to our infrastructure – to ensure that our service remains of the same high standard.

Comments are closed.