The Times, 1st December 2016 Under the terms of Article 50 the UK will leave the EU two years after the date Theresa May notifies the bloc of the government’s intention to quit. If no deal governing the UK’s new relationship with the EU is struck in that time frame then there will be none except for the trading rules of the World Trade Organisation (WTO). Few people on any…
The Times, 1st December 2016 A detailed policy paper published today the Eurosceptic MP John Redwood makes a controversial argument: that any EU migrants who arrived in Britain after the referendum vote to leave must be obliged to comply with any new immigration system introduced in post-Brexit Britain. What are the legal implications of this proposal? At present, all citizens of EU member states, Norway and Iceland have the right…
The Times, 17th November 2016 Among the many issues that companies need to watch as the UK moves ever closer to a Brexit is what happens to their intellectual property protection. A company’s intellectual property, its brands and its inventions, can be its most valuable asset. In recent years, businesses have taken advantage of the EU-wide protection for trademarks, and a unified system for protecting inventions across the EU has…
The Times, 3rd November 2016 The prime minister must seek parliament’s approval to trigger the process of taking Britain out of the European Union, the High Court has ruled. In one of the most important constitutional cases in generations, three senior judges ruled that Theresa May did not have power to trigger Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty to start the two-year process of negotiating Brexit without the prior authority…
The Spanish multinational group Ferrovial has announced a 42% drop in profits for the first nine months of the year, largely due to losses caused by a 17% devaluation of the pound sterling. The industrial group has several investments in the UK, mainly in airports and public infrastructures. See El País article (in Spanish).
The Times, 27th October 2016 Much of the discussion of the economic impact of leaving the EU has focused on tariffs. If Britain were forced to fall back on the World Trade Organisation tariffs that provide the baseline rules for global trade, for example, then cars exported to Europe would have 10 per cent tariffs levied. Yet tariffs are a piece of cake compared with other barriers to trade addressed…
The Times, 20th October 2016 What actually is the single market, and what’s the difference between membership and access? The single market is the EU’s defining project. Its fundamental idea is that if you break down the barriers to trade you drive prosperity. And barriers to trade are not just tariffs – they’re also regulations. In practice being part of the single market means that if you make chocolate in…
Teresa May announced in a television interview that the time limit for invoking Article 50 of the Treaty of Rome would be the end of March 2017. That would mean that the UK would definitively leave the EU by March 2019. The government will be preparing a bill to repeal the 1972 European Communities Act and incorporate the relevant EU legislation in British law. http://bit.ly/2dGXTkI
As a result of the political turmoil following the vote, David Cameron resigned as prime minister, with Teresa May taking over from him.
After a closely fought and at times bitter contest, the UK voted to leave the EU. Some 51.9% voted in favour of leaving, with 48.1% in favour of remaining.