Oh Noes! They said it couldn't possibly be done....

[Tjoepstil]

[Brian Gaff]

Does it not make you wonder what Euratom actually does then? I also am told that the people at Cern and the European Space Agency are saying they exist outside of the EU regulatory framework so us leaving should not affect things except the possible need for visas to work in each others countries as that has not been needed with Britain part of the EU. Brian

[newshound]

I was always convinced that all it would need was a sufficiently cunning plan. Fortunately the Brexit lunatics never bleated that having safeguards based on inspection was an intolerable loss of sovereignty.

[Tim Streater]

CERN has never been part of any EU framework as it predates the EU by a good 30 years. CERN is, furthermore, an international organisation based in Switzerland with a frontier-free extension into France (my office was in France for the most part and I walked across the border into Switzerland to have lunch at one of the CERN restaurants).

CERN's status is on a par with UN organisations in Geneva (such as the UN, WHO, WMO, ...) and its employees have special status (I paid no income or local taxes when I worked there). CERN tells the Swiss who it intends to employ and the employee is automatically issued with a residence permit for Switzerland (valid until you leave CERN).

So the issue of "work permits" etc does not arise.

[whisky-dave]

I wonder how they'll work out what part of the EU the Atacama desert is in :-)