The UK in the departure lounge
Dominic Hopkins, head of disputes and litigation, assesses where we are now in our ‘conscious uncoupling’ from the EU.
The success of the Conservative Party in December’s election means we are heading towards the departure gate of the European Union. The UK will cease to be a member of the fraternity of States we joined 46 years ago this month. So, will we be waving our boarding pass, walking through the gate, embarking our plane and bidding farewell to the legal landscape we have come to know so well? Not really. Not yet anyway.
The deal reached by Boris Johnson with the EU first needs ratifying. That, at time of writing, is in process, but we can confidently expect this to occur given that European political consents are in the bag and Mr Johnson has his majority in the House of Commons to get the requisite legislation through parliament. That will become the European Union (Withdrawal Agreement) Act 2020.
Assuming it passes into law, the 2020 Act will not place the UK beyond the reach of EU law. It is agreed there will be a time-limited implementation period until 31 December 2020 (unless terminated early or extended), buying the EU and the UK time to try and chart a future relationship of one sort or another. There are very few certainties and considerable complexity to be worked through.
Meanwhile, with echoes of Tom Hanks in the film ‘The Terminal’, the UK will remain in the legal departure lounge with an ambiguous status for a while yet. EU rules and regulations will continue to apply in the UK after the scheduled departure date and although the direct jurisdiction of the European Court of Justice (CJEU) will end in the UK at the close of January, the existing EU mechanisms for supervision and enforcement will continue to apply and the supremacy of CJEU decisions will be preserved through the implementation period.
Although the implementation period will preserve the key ingredients of the legal scheme with which we have become familiar for some months yet, it is bound to produce tricky legal points to grapple with. The job of ‘uncoupling’ the UK from the EU is a highly technical exercise – unprecedented in its legal complexity – so the time we have in the departure lounge is going to be essential.
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