Archive for June, 2016

About Brexit

Sunday, June 26th, 2016

“Bum faces – not allowed.” My british nephew’s clear message on his Berlin residence.

Some of you may know that part of our family is based in Great Britain. So for us the Brexit is not just a distressing fact with respect to the unity of Europe. Especially for my sister -a german citizen living in London and currently teaching architecture in Brighton and Brussels- life will get most probably quite a bit more difficult. So of course we are not happy about the Brexit. Nevertheless I feel rather uncomfortable with voices in the media which suggest that asking the British people to decide wether they would like to stay in the European Union or not as “problematic”. That is I think the referendum was a very democratic move and should be repected as such.
It is almost sure that the motivations for some of the votes were not connected to the actual question with all its consequences and of course it is important to understand not only the outcome of the Brexit but also those motivations but I think that rendering the Brexit referendum as problematic means implicitly to question (that form of) democratic decision making. So if some people want to question the procedure of a referendum as such then this should be adressed directly and not in connection with the outcome of one particular question.