Regardless of a leave or stay vote the EU has tougher questions to address than Brexit

The first challenge on the day after the UK referendum will be to arrange the EU’s and the 27 Member States’ relationship with the UK, irrespective of the outcome. A victory of the leave campaign would be impossible to ignore. This referendum is in this regard different from the Danish, Irish, French and Dutch referenda of the past, in which the majority of the population said clearly and loudly ‘no’ to the ever closer Union, but in response to which the EU found means and ways to press on. Leave would hence lead us into unknown territory. Article 50 TEU providing for the legal possibility to withdraw from the EU was never meant to be used. A stay vote however would equally require arranging and detailing Cameron’s new deal agreed in February 2016. As a result the UK would be in an even more special position than it is now, where it is already somewhat removed from the integrating centre of the EU because it is not part of two of the three big integration projects: the Schengen area and the Eurozone.