Brexit: Towards an ‘EFTA-like’ dispute settlement mechanism. CEPS Commentary, 31 August 2017

Blockmans, Steven. and Van der Loo, Guillaume (2017) Brexit: Towards an ‘EFTA-like’ dispute settlement mechanism. CEPS Commentary, 31 August 2017. [Policy Paper]

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Abstract

In its position paper on the jurisdiction of the CJEU, the UK is flirting with an EFTA-like solution, but it does not spell out the inherent consequences of such a future dispute settlement model. The UK government of Theresa May is fond of saying that it wants a “deep and special partnership” with the EU after Brexit. But for more than a year, it has been conspicuously vague about what that relationship should amount to. To close the gap that had emerged with the hard and fast positions formulated in a transparent fashion by the European Commission’s negotiating team, the UK Department for Exiting the EU (DExEU) has issued a flurry of position papers of its own over the summer. Even if the Commission has qualified these papers as “not satisfactory”, the position paper on “Enforcement and dispute resolution” of August 23rd reveals an uncharacteristic degree of sophistication: it gives a clear and concise account of the UK’s constitutional requirements, whilst describing the limitations of what is possible for the EU. What the paper does not do, however, is take position on which mechanism(s) should be introduced, and in which agreement(s), in order to endow the future bilateral relationship with the EU27 with the necessary judicial and enforcement backstops that would underpin the kind of ‘friction-free’ regulatory space that the UK government has been advocating.

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