Finding the benefits of Brexit: food law and the UK’s emerging regulatory identity

10 March 2022 Emily Lydgate is Senior Lecturer in Law at the University of Sussex and Chloe Anthony is a Doctoral Researcher and Tutor at the University of Sussex Law School  From chlorinated chicken to sausage wars, food law has been highly contested in defining the UK’s post-Brexit direction. Not only is it seen as vulnerable to deregulation through trade agreements, the UK has faced new trade barriers with the EU and between Great Britain and Northern Ireland. These have concerned regulatory issues and have had an enormous impact on food trade. While much attention has rightly focused on Northern Ireland, departure from the EU’s regulatory union has provided a steep challenge in the rest of Great Britain, too. Food law is a devolved matter and Scotland has passed legislation setting out its intent to continue aligning with EU law, including for food law. […]

By |2022-03-10T15:14:58+00:0010 March 2022|UK- EU|2 Comments

Border posts at Gretna Green? Loosening food safety legislation could put Union under serious strain

5 November 2019 Border posts could be required at Gretna Green and the Severn Bridge in response to widening regional standards in food safety that could open up after Brexit, our new Briefing Paper warns. Our analysis warns of the potential for very different regulatory approaches between the UK Government and devolved authorities towards controversial food practices including chlorinated chicken, GM crops and pesticides. The existence of such discrepancies would likely have a significant and detrimental impact on the UK’s ability to strike trade deals, analysis by Dr Emily Lydgate, Chloe Anthony and Prof Erik Millstone has warned. […]

By |2019-11-05T10:02:11+00:005 November 2019|UK- EU|3 Comments

Tilting the playing field? The asymmetry in the UK and EU’s regulatory ‘ask’

27 July 2018 Dr Emily Lydgate is a lecturer in Law at the University of Sussex and a fellow of the UK Trade Policy Observatory. The July UK White Paper on the future relationship with the EU calls for a ‘common rule-book’ for goods. This has sometimes been shorthanded as a proposal for a Single Market for goods (in contrast to services, which departs more dramatically from the status quo).[1] But the scope of regulation the UK proposes should fall within this ‘common rulebook’ is narrower than what would be covered in a Single Market for goods – as the EEA Agreement demonstrates. It’s narrower even than that covered by the EU-Ukraine DCFTA Agreement. So what does the common rule-book cover – and how might this match up with the EU’s regulatory ‘ask’ of the UK? […]

By |2018-07-27T14:54:22+01:0027 July 2018|UK- EU|1 Comment
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