It’s hard to blame people for invoking Groundhog Day at this point in the Brexit process. Indeed, a lot of people have clearly been feeling like Bill Murray for at least two years. Every day there is a new important phone call. A crisis summit. A storming out. Things have changed. And then things haven’t.
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The pandemic seems to have warped our sense of time. It was early spring and now, suddenly, it’s autumn. But Brexit has provided a strange bit of consistency throughout the period. After a month’s pause, the EU and UK have continued to negotiate their future relationship which is hardly surprising given the looming deadline. While the UK government could have requested an extension, it chose not to do so and the transition period will end on 31 December.
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This post is by Nigel Haigh, former director of the Institute for European Environmental Policy and chair of Green Alliance from 1989 to 1998.
There are two reasons why the government published a UK internal market bill and white paper dealing with products and some services. One is obvious, the other less so.
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From the start of next year, the UK will no longer be bound by European Union laws or subject to the European Court of Justice. We will leave the single market and the customs union; replace the Common Agricultural Policy and the Common Fisheries Policy with national policies; and cease to be a member of the European Chemicals Agency.
The UK has already left the EU, but only when the transition period ends will we really be on our own. How are we doing? Will it be the green Brexit promised by ministers? Read more
This post is by Professor Maria Lee, co-director of the Centre for Law and the Environment at UCL, and Dr Carolyn Abbot, Senior Lecturer in law at the University of Manchester. Maria has been a member of the Greener UK Brexit Scenarios Group.
There are important stories to be told about the shaping of the Brexit debate by the environmental NGO community, and about the place of legal expertise in that debate. We have been exploring these stories Read more
Last month saw the ‘future relationship’ talks between the UK and the EU resume after a pandemic hiatus. Fisheries management was cited by both Michael Gove and Michel Barnier as a major sticking point. Although conflicts between democracies over fisheries are surprisingly frequent, this one is at the centre of the constitutional and economic rupture that is Brexit, meaning the stakes are even higher. Read more
This post is by Andy Jordan and Brendan Moore, who are respectively co-chair and research associate at Brexit&Environment.
The fate of the trade negotiations between the EU and the UK will hinge on the ability of both sides to strike a deal on the so-called ‘level playing field’ provisions that prevent either side from lowering (or ‘regressing’) their environmental standards to secure a competitive advantage. Read more
This post is by Colin Hines, convenor of the UK Green New Deal Group.
Shaun Spiers correctly cites the concerns felt by many in industry about the effects of chancellor Sajid Javid recent assertion in the Financial Times that the UK will no longer be aligned with EU rules, or in the single market or customs union. Read more
The Brexit debate has largely been an internal squabble among British factions vying for control of the UK’s national priorities. This has meant international pressures have lacked consideration in public discourse, particularly when it comes to the UK’s post-Brexit trading environment. Read more
The Environment Bill, published at the end of October, has given us a glimpse of what environmental regulation could look like after Brexit. Positioned as a “huge star” of the government’s legislation programme, the bill got off to a promising start. But it, like all other bills in train, will fall due to a general election being called. Its fate now lies in the hands of a new government.
