Matrix’s Legal Support Service provides a weekly round-up of Brexit-related links and news.

Brexit and the UK constitution

1. A crowdfunded legal challenge mounted in the Irish courts to determine whether Article 50 notice is revocable, has been abandoned due to the delay there would be resulting from Irish opposition to making a referral to the CJEU. A decision would not be reached before the negotiations would need to be concluded according to David Davis and Michel Barnier.
2. The Guardian has published an edited version of a speech by Ian McEwan discussing the need for a scrutinising Parliament and a second referendum on any Brexit deal.
   
3. On their Great Repeal Bill blog, Bircham Dyson Bell discuss, an “approach to ‘transposition’ which the Government seems, from the White Paper, to have decided against”.
4. A solicitor and legal historian has written an article for the New Law Journal suggesting that the way in which Vote Leave used its NHS funding pledge during the EU referendum campaign could violate the Treason Felony Act 1848, s 3.

The UK’s post-Brexit deal with the EU

1. The UK in a Changing Europe has published a paper discussing the manifestos of the three main parties in relation to the negotiation of the Brexit deal, and with a week to go until the General Election, the BBC has reported that Jeremy Corbyn and Theresa May have clashed, setting out competing visions of post-Brexit Britain.
2. Analysis by the Financial Times has revealed that, after Brexit, the UK will need to renegotiate at least 759 treaties with 168 countries just to maintain the status quo.
3. Angela Merkel has stated that, following the UK’s Brexit vote, the EU has been undermined and cannot completely rely upon Britain any more, though Amber Rudd attempted to reassure her, insisting that the UK wants to maintain a ‘deep and special partnership’ with the EU after it leaves the bloc.
4. In an attempt to re-energise her campaign following her social care reversal, Theresa May is seeking to switch the focus to Brexit and an ‘aggressive’ Brussels, and has stated that her Government will embrace ‘the promise of Brexit’. Meanwhile Corbyn has outlined a Brexit vision.
5. The EU has produced working papers on the Essential Principles on Financial Settlement and the Essential Principles on Citizens’ Rights, which The Guardian reports reveal the painstaking detail of the Brexit process.
6. Considering voting theory, Thomas Colignatus for the Royal Economic Society, has explained that the Brexit referendum question was flawed in its design.
7. Franklin Delhousse (The Times, paywall), a former CJEU judge, has warned that demands from Brussels, including that the CJEU retain supremacy over British law to enforce rights for EU nationals, could result in Europeans living in the UK having ‘super-rights’. Speaking to British expats in Spain, Politico has found many pensioners have fears over their future and the possibility that Brexit will mean they have to return home.
8. Martin Wolf, in the Financial Times, has criticised Theresa May’s position of no deal being better than a bad deal through considering the trade realities.
   

Impact of Brexit on the economy

1. The effect of the vote to leave the EU has been more muted than economists expected, with UK business investment remaining resilient. However Bloomberg has reported that the Greek Government is seeking to lure UK-based ship owners and brokers the move their EU HQs to Greece post-Brexit.
2. In the New York Times, Simon Tilford has argues that Brexit will make Britain’s economy, which in economic growth terms is lagging behind Spain and Germany, worse, whilst the Financial Times has analysed the dangers of no Brexit deal to the UK economy. Further FT analysis has suggested that bond traders think a hard Brexit or no deal within the next two years is likely and will hammer the economy hard.
3. The European Securities and Markets Authority has issued principles for a supervisory approach to relocations from the UK post-Brexit, warning firms in the City of London that they will not be allowed to use ‘letterbox’ companies in Europe to save their market access.
4. The LSE Centre for Economic Performance has conducted a policy analysis of Brexit and the UK economy, considering the many ways to leave the EU.
5. The FCA has sent letters to several of the UK’s largest asset management companies requesting detailed Brexit plans in relation to staff relocation and impact on capital and IT systems.

Brexit as it affects Practice Areas:

Criminal

Francis FitzGibbon has discussed the implications for criminal justice in the UK of Brexit.

As the Head of the Law Department at Queen Mary University of London, Valsamis Mitsilegas has published a paper discussing European criminal law post-Brexit.

Competition and Regulatory

As part of the LSE’s policy briefing series Dr Niamh Dunne has published a paper discussing competition law and policy after Brexit.

Health

Mark Dayan of the Nuffield Trust has written an article considering the need to get a Brexit deal which works for the NHS, suggesting that there could be a £500m-a-year bill post-Brexit for returning retirees.

The European Commission and European Medicines Agency have published a paper concerning pharmaceutical regulation moving forward after Brexit.

Immigration

In proposals with implications for Brexit, a legal adviser to the CJEU has argued that EU nationals should not face stricter residency rules if they become citizens of another member country. This came in the dismissal of the UK’s refusal to grant residency to an Algerian who married a woman with Spanish nationality before taking UK citizenship in Case C-165/16.

Events

1. Chatham House is hosting its annual competition conference on Global competition policy: Politics, Brexit and challenging the consensus on 16 Jun 2017 from 9.30 until 18.00, addressing what Brexit, as a major political development, means for the global consensus on competition policy.