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Abstract
A European Commission memo mentions that UK's Withdrawal Agreement covers inter alia 'a protocol on the Sovereign Base Areas in Cyprus, protecting the interests of Cypriots who live and work' there. This paper suggests that this is neither an accurate nor a fair description. The Protocol may protect some of the rights ascribed to Cypriot citizens due to their EU identity, but at the same time it preserves certain strategic interests of the UK in Cyprus. As such, the Protocol echoes some major elements of a metacolonial realm in Cyprus. This however, is yet another instance demonstrating the consent of the government of Cyprus for the continuation of that realm. The Protocol assigns to the UK the authority for applying the Union's acquis in the 'base areas', whereas the Republic of Cyprus is considered a UK-entrusted EU Member State 'with responsibility for implementing and enforcing provisions of Union law in the Sovereign Base Areas'.
Keywords: postcolonial anomaly, metacolonial realm, incomplete decolonization, servitude regime, Brexit, Withdrawal Agreement, UK 'bases areas' in Cyprus, Protocol 3, 'SBAs' Protocol, Cyprus, UK, EU
Introduction
This paper makes a critical assessment of the Cyprus ('SBAs') protocol annexed to the draft agreement on the withdrawal of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland from the European Union and the European Atomic Energy Community, as agreed at negotiators' level on 14 November 2018. A memo prepared by the Commission states that that protocol is 'protecting the interests of Cypriots who live and work in the Sovereign Base Areas'.3 That reading of the protocol, however, pertains to just one part of its provisions and, at the same time, it blurs some other essential parts of it which pertain to the strategic context that surrounds the way in which that protocol was drafted in order to preserve and extend certain strategic interests of the UK in Cyprus under a colonial context.4 At the same time, it constitutes yet another instance of the voluntary acceptance of the UK asserted sovereignty in the Tase areas' by the Government of the Republic of Cyprus.
Writing in 1960s, Antony Verrier observed that the UK kept some territory in Cyprus aiming 'first and foremost to preserve Britain's strategic interests in the island, which, through bases and...