What do We Really Mean by Regulatory ‘Divergence’ after Brexit?

The original idea behind the Brexit Effect project was the need to make sense of changes in UK regulatory policy after the UK finally left the European Union and exited the transition period. One way of capturing this ‘effect’ is to think of change in terms of regulatory ‘alignment’ or ‘divergence’. The conventional way we...

Why is the Government Already Thinking about Amending the UK Internal Market Act?

After a swift parliamentary process, the United Kingdom Internal Market Act (UKIM Act) was granted Royal Assent on 17th December 2020 and came into force as the ‘transition period’ following the UK’s departure from the EU came to an end on 31 December 2020. Both the Scottish Parliament and the Welsh Senedd withheld their legislative consent to the Act, citing the ability...

An Uneven ‘Level Playing Field’ – the EU/UK Trade Agreement

A week before the expiry of the transition period, the EU and UK announced they had finalised the terms of a Trade and Cooperation Agreement (‘TCA’). Legislation – the European Union (Future Relation) Act 2020 – was rushed through the UK Parliament in a single day to give domestic legal effect to the Agreement while for the EU, the...

(Re) Interpreting Brexit – the Judiciary as a Driver of Regulatory Divergence

At the beginning of July, the United Kingdom Government published a consultation paper. It sought views on whether to permit courts other than the highest UK courts to depart from ‘retained EU case law’. Under the European Union (Withdrawal) Act 2018, other courts are bound by the precedents of EU case law – as that case law stood...