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If Britain votes to leave the EU it will have to negotiate its exit and a new post-withdrawal relationship with the EU, one that will have to be agreed by the remaining 27 EU member states and the European Parliament. What positions might they take in the negotiations? Over the next few weeks the LSE’s BrexitVote blog will be running a series of overviews from each member state and the European Parliament setting out what positions they might take. Written by authors based at universities and research institutions across Europe, and compiled by the LSE’s Tim Oliver, the overviews build on an introductory piece in which he set out the various negotiations the EU will undertake in the event of a British exit. This post is the third in the series and gives views from Bulgaria, Cyprus, Luxembourg, Poland and Portugal.

Last week Vote Leave laid out its plans for a divorce and a future relationship with the EU. It argued that if voters decided to end UK’s membership of the EU, the UK would negotiate a “friendly deal” with European partners by the next general election in 2020. But this post-referendum roadmap does not hold water, argue Agata Gostyńska-Jakubowska and Adam Lazowski. It would, at best, further antagonise the European partners and, at worst, create economic and legal chaos. Here are four reasons why.

The special relationship between the United States and the United Kingdom cannot be taken for granted. Agata Gostyńska-Jakubowska and Rem Korteweg argue, in the latest issue of the CER Insight, that in spite of its long history the famous UK-US alliance may not prove very useful during Brexit. It is all but certain that Washington will not aid London in its exit negotiations with the EU-27.

Poland became an EU member during the 2004 enlargement, but has yet to join the euro. Agata Gostyńska assesses the first ten years of Polish EU membership and the potential for the country to take a more central role in EU decision-making. She writes that Poland has made a successful transition from a ‘junior member state’ to a stronger actor on the EU stage, and that the Eurozone crisis in particular has allowed the country to take a more active role in EU developments. Nevertheless, Poland will have to confront future challenges, most notably resolving its position on the euro and dealing with the potential rebalancing of power brought about through the upcoming change to Council of the EU voting rules in November.

The success or failure of David Cameron’s planned renegotiation of the UK’s EU membership will depend to a large extent on how the other 27 EU member states respond to his proposals. But how do countries across the EU view the UK’s renegotiation? Building on a report published in 2014 by the German Council on Foreign Relations, EUROPP is running a series of overviews of the renegotiation from each of the EU’s member states. Compiled by the LSE’s Tim Oliver and written by authors based at universities and research institutions, the overviews will set out what discussion – if any – there has been about the renegotiation and the wider views within each country on a potential Brexit. The series begins with Italy, Poland, Bulgaria and Malta. Italy: A Brexit would create a dangerous political precedent for Italy Poland: Warsaw’s stance will remain uncertain until after the October elections Bulgaria: Brexit has been overshadowed by Ukraine, Grexit and the refugee crisis Malta: Should Brexit materialise, UK influence in Malta is likely to diminish

In January, the European Commission announced an inquiry into whether recent Polish reforms affecting the country’s constitutional tribunal and media are consistent with the rule of law. Agata Gostyńska-Jakubowska writes that the Commission’s review has been noticeably different from its previous approach in relation to Hungary, where there have been similar concerns raised over reforms carried out by Viktor Orbán’s Fidesz government. She argues that the fact that the Law and Justice party has less political allies at the European level and that the Juncker’s Commission is more assertive vis-à-vis member-states than its predecessor, may go some way toward explaining why the cases have been handled differently.

PLEC, the gene encoding the cytolinker protein plectin, has eight tissue-specific isoforms in humans, arising by alternate splicing of the first exon. To date, all PLEC mutations that cause epidermolysis bullosa simplex (EBS) were found in exons common to all isoforms. Due to the ubiquitous presence of plectin in mammalian tissues, EBS from recessive plectin mutations is always associated with extracutaneous involvement including muscular dystrophy, pyloric atresia and cardiomyopathy. We studied a consanguineous family with sisters having isolated blistering suggesting EBS. Skin disease started with foot blisters at walking age and became generalized at puberty while sparing mucous membranes. DNA sequencing revealed a homozygous nonsense mutation (c.46C>T; p.Arg16X) in the first exon of the plectin variant encoding plectin isoform 1a (P1a). Immunofluorescence antigen mapping, transmission electron microscopy, western blot analysis and qRT-PCR were performed on patient skin and cultured keratinocytes, control myocardium and striated muscle samples. We found hypoplastic hemidesmosomes and intra-epidermal ‘pseudo-junctional' cleavage fitting EBS. Screening for cardiomyopathy and muscle dystrophy showed no abnormalities. We report the first cases of autosomal-recessive EBS from P1a deficiency affecting skin, while mucous membranes, heart and muscle are spared. The dominant expression of the P1a isoform in epidermal basal cell layer and cultured keratinocytes suggests that mutations in the first exon of isoform 1a cause skin-only EBS without extracutaneous involvement. Our study characterizes yet another of the eight isoforms of plectin and adds a tissue-specific phenotype to the spectrum of ‘plectinopathies' produced by mutations of unique first exons of this gene