Category Archives: Brexit

Brexit is prompting companies to ask themselves many legal questions. One of them is the fate of jurisdiction clauses.

You are a professional and party to a contract where one party is British and the other is a member of the European Union ("EU"). The contract contains a jurisdiction clause.

You are aware that the United Kingdoms withdrawal from the EU prevents the application of the Brussels I bis Regulation1 to your contract after January 1, 2021, and you wonder whether your jurisdiction clause remains effective.

The answer is twofold:

The table below shows whether the Convention applies to your clause and what the consequences are.

There is a jurisdiction clause in a contract between a UK party and a party domiciled in a EU member state: how effective is this clause after January 1, 2021?

In order to determine which regime is applicable to your jurisdiction clause, you should pay particular attention to the following key elements:

States parties to the 2005 Hague Convention: EU member states, Mexico, Montenegro, Singapore and the United Kingdom (whose application to join as an autonomous country dates back to September 28, 2020).

Professional: The Convention does not apply when one of the parties is a natural person acting primarily for personal, family or household purposes.

Exclusivity: The clause is exclusive when it designates the jurisdictions of a single state party.

Unilateral clause: when the clause applies to only one of the parties. These clauses are excluded from the scope of the Convention.

Asymmetrical clause: where the clause provides that one party may bring proceedings in more courts than the other. These clauses are excluded from the scope of the Convention.

Excluded matters: Article 2 of the Convention (link) excludes from its scope about 20 subject matters. We invite you to check that your dispute does not concern an excluded matter.

Exequatur: refers to the judicial procedure allowing a foreign judgment to be enforceable in France.When the judgement is issued is a state party which is also a EU member state, the judgement can be enforced in France without going through an exequatur procedure. When the judgement is issued in a state which is not a EU member state, the judgement can only be enforced in France after an exequatur procedure.

As a reminder, the clauses excluded from the Hague Convention regime will be examined according to the domestic laws of the seized court.

In conclusion, as it stands, it is the Hague Convention (or the domestic laws of the seized court) that is used to determine the validity of the jurisdiction clause. But this may change.

The 2007 Lugano Convention3 allows for the application of a regime identical to that of the Brussels I bis Regulation between the EU and the signatory states (i.e. for the time being, the European Free Trade Association (EFTA), which includes Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway and Switzerland).

The United Kingdom applied to join the Lugano Convention on April 8, 2020. Its accession is conditional upon the unanimous consent of all member states, and the EU has not yet consented (Client alert of April 19, 2021).

The Lugano Convention guarantees, among other things, that decisions rendered in one of its contracting states are recognized in the other contracting states, without the need to resort to any exequatur procedure4. For now, the enforcement of foreign judgments in the UK is governed by UK law.

In the meantime, one must remain cautious.

Original post:

The fate of post-Brexit jurisdiction clauses - JD Supra

He did not want to die until Brexit was reversed. These words were spoken at the funeral last week of my dear friend and former Observer colleague Dick Leonard.

Dick died a month ago at the ripe old age of 90. The speaker was his widow, Irne Heidelberger-Leonard, before a group of mourners who included the Labour leader Keir Starmer, to whom Dick had been something of a political mentor.

Dicks devotion to the European cause was such that he jeopardised his political career he was parliamentary private secretary to the Labour cabinet minister Anthony Crosland from 1970 to 1974 when he joined 68 other Labour rebels, led by Roy Jenkins, in voting in 1971 in favour of joining the European community, against Labour policy at the time. Yes, Labours attitude towards what is now the EU has always been a rollercoaster ride, and here we go again, with prominent Labour politicians lamely accepting a Brexit that is manifestly a disaster and needs to be reversed.

Why, even that prominent culprit and architect of the lying Leave campaign appeared to be having second thoughts about it all in his BBC Two interview last week. Is Brexit a good idea? No one on Earth knows, averred the shameless Dominic Cummings. Indeed, said the prime ministers former best friend, it was perhaps perfectly reasonable to say Brexit was a mistake.

Ill say it is perfectly reasonable. Many of us here on Earth know that only too well. But Cummings almost indicating that in delivering Brexit for Johnson he was merely acting in the capacity of a hired mercenary also told us that anyone convinced that Brexit was a good thing must have a screw loose.

The media are now replete daily with disaster stories. The Northern Ireland protocol is unworkable. The egregious Brexit minister Lord Frost makes this country a laughing stock every time he says the deal that the UK signed up to for the short-term political convenience of Johnson should be renegotiated on the grounds that the EU is being wait for it unreasonable! He calls to mind the Groucho Marx quip: These are my principles. And if you dont like them well, I have others.

One begins to wonder whether Cummings now thinks that, on top of all the other well-publicised prime ministerial gaffes, the chaos of Brexit may contribute to Johnsons downfall a significant signpost being the way freedom day on 19 July swiftly turned into fiasco day in the same week that the Northern Ireland crisis became wholly manifest. In the former case it did not need footballers to embarrass the government: just the chief executive of Marks & Spencer.

But back to my late friend Dick Leonard, with whom I often worked covering European matters when he was based in Brussels. Many of the problems brought about by the Brexiters might have been avoided if they had consulted the invaluable guides to the EU he jointly wrote for the Economist and later the publishers Routledge. In the 2016 edition of The Routledge Guide to the European Union, the authors Dick and another EU expert, Robert Taylor observed of the impending UK referendum: Not everybody would accept that it would be a win-win situation for both Britain and the EU if voters choose to remain, but it will assuredly be a lose-lose one if they decide to quit.

If the Brexiters had consulted the guide, they could have discovered what the customs union and the single market actually were, and what making the crass decision to abandon the hard-won privileges of membership would entail (privileges won, in the case of the single market, not least by their ostensible political heroine Margaret Thatcher). It beggars belief that, after the deed was done and the cabinet Brexiters were faced with reality, they had to have both institutions explained to them by our former ambassador to the EU, Sir Ivan Rogers.

Alas, as that astute observer Denis MacShane a former Labour minister for Europe recently pointed out, Johnson needs a permanent war with the EU to prove that the Battle of Brexit is not over. This in the name of a country that went to war in 1939 to save Europe, and whose prime minister, Winston Churchill, even proposed, in 1940, what would have in effect been a political union of the UK and France.

Above all, says MacShane who probably coined the term Brexit and certainly forecast the result of the referendum Johnson wants the main opposition, Labour, to say nothing about Brexit.

But the time has assuredly come, and those words of our friend Dick Leonards widow he did not want to die until Brexit was reversed will, I hope, stiffen Starmers resolve.

Original post:

Labour must say it out loud: Brexit needs to be reversed - The Guardian

Edward Attenborough and Charles Balmain of White & Case consider what impact the UK leaving the Europ...

Edward Attenborough and Charles Balmain of White & Case consider what impact the UK leaving the European Union will have on Englands place in the dispute resolution market.

The United Kingdoms vote to leave the European Union on 23 June 2016 inevitably heralded speculation around the implications for all manner of industries, not least the UKs successful legal market for commercial disputes.

The received wisdom at the time was that Brexit would do little or nothing to detract from the benefits of English law as a choice to govern international commercial contracts. Some commentators even considered Brexit a positive development, as it would remove the contamination of European law from English law. On the other hand, there was uncertainty around the impact of the loss of the Brussels regime for cross-border cooperation in civil proceedings and the recognition and enforcement of court judgments, both in terms of what if anything would replace it, and whether this may cause commercial parties to reconsider their use of the English courts.

This article takes stock of the situation five years after the Brexit vote, and more than half a year after the end of the Brexit transition period. It addresses the effects of Brexit on the landscape for conflicts of laws issues, and then considers whether these have led to any apparent change in the size or nature of the disputes market in England. The implications of Brexit for investor-state disputes a rich topic of itself is beyond the scope of this article.

There is little reason for commercial parties to reconsider their preference for English law, English-seated arbitrations or for the most part English courts, and little evidence that they are in fact doing so. Indeed, the international disputes market in England is booming. While the nature and style of disputes continues to evolve a process accelerated in some respects by the Covid-19 pandemic and while London faces ever-increasing competition from other jurisdictions, there is little to suggest that the evolution has been driven by Brexit. Nor does Brexit appear to have caused any significant change in market perception of Englands benefits as a forum for resolving cross-border disputes, at least for now.

To gauge the impact of Brexit on Englands appeal as a forum for international disputes, we first consider what Brexit has changed, and not changed, in the relevant legal framework.

First, the European Union (Withdrawal) Act 2018 avoided a cliff-edge revocation of all European law from English law. It provides for all EU legislation which applied directly or indirectly to the UK as at 31 December 2020 to be retained in UK law as retained EU legislation. This avoided uncertainty and potential confusion from the impact of Brexit on substantive English law. English laws divergence from existing European law will therefore be gradual and deliberate. And the impact of European law on English commercial contract law is limited in any case. The commonly cited benefits of English law, such as its promotion of freedom of contract and commercial certainty, are rooted in English common law, and have little to do with European law.

Secondly, the regime for determining the governing law for contractual and non-contractual obligations is essentially unchanged from the position pre-Brexit.

The Law Applicable to Contractual Obligations and Non-Contractual Obligations (Amendment etc.) (EU Exit) Regulations 2019 ensured that the relevant European law instruments, the Rome I and Rome II Regulations, continue to apply in the UK to determine the law applicable to a contract and to parties non-contractual obligations. The Rome Regulations require the parties choice of law to be upheld, subject only to limited exceptions. Rome I and Rome II also require parties agreed choice of law to be upheld in EU Member State courts regardless of whether their chosen law is the law of a Member State. So Member State courts too should continue to uphold English choice of law clauses in contracts.

Thirdly, however, the framework for choice of court jurisdiction and the cross-border recognition and enforcement of court judgments has changed as a result of Brexit.

The Brussels I Recast Regulation, which is the EU instrument that harmonises court jurisdiction issues and enforcement of judgments within the EU, essentially precludes a race to judgment between two EU jurisdictions, upholds parties choice of forum and makes the recognition and enforcement of a judgment of an EU Member State court close to automatic across the EU. But it applies only to the proceedings and judgments of the courts of Member States. Now that the UK has ceased to be a Member State, the Brussels Regulation has no application to the English courts or their judgments. It has been specifically revoked in the UK.

The UK has partially filled this void by acceding to the Hague Convention on Choice of Court Agreements 2005. Although the Hague Convention is yet to enjoy wide international take up, it entered into force in all EU Member States in 2015. The UK acceded to the Convention in its own right immediately after the end of the Brexit transition period, on 1 January 2021. The Hague Convention upholds choice of court agreements in contracting states by requiring the court of any contracting state other than that for which the parties contracted to suspend or dismiss proceedings brought contrary to the parties agreement. It also provides for the straightforward recognition and enforcement of judgments across contracting states.

However, the Hague Convention is not as comprehensive or well tested an instrument as the Brussels Regulation. In particular, it applies only to exclusive jurisdiction agreements. Although not entirely clear, this likely means that an optional disputes clause that allows either party a choice in where to bring proceedings as is commonly negotiated, for example, by banks in financing agreements would not qualify for the protections of the Hague Convention.

Although the UK has meanwhile applied to accede to the Lugano Convention, which broadly mirrors the Brussels Regulation, the consent of all signatory states is required for the UK to do so. All EU Member States and European Free Trade Association (EFTA) states are party to the Lugano Convention. And while the EFTA states have confirmed their support for the UKs accession, the EU Commission has recommended that the UKs application be rejected. It remains to be seen whether the EU27 will share this view.

Finally, Brexit has not changed the cross-border framework relating to arbitration. In particular, the recognition and enforcement of arbitral awards will continue to be subject to the 1958 New York Convention on the Recognition and Enforcement of Foreign Arbitral Awards, to which all EU Member States (and the UK) are party. Indeed, the most significant likely impact of Brexit on arbitration in England is the potential return of the English courts jurisdiction to issue anti-suit injunctions in support of arbitration. The English courts are generally willing to injunct parties from bringing or continuing proceedings brought in breach of an agreement to arbitrate, but were previously precluded from doing so in relation to proceedings brought or threatened in EU Members States following the ECJs decision in the West Tankers case. The West Tankers line of case law, however, is a consequence of the ECJs interpretation of the Brussels Regulation. It is difficult to see why in principle the English courts should refuse to grant an anti-suit to restrain proceedings in an EU Member State court now that the Brussels Regulation no longer applies in the UK (and assuming it is not replaced by the Lugano Convention).

There is no obvious and direct reason why Brexit should discourage commercial parties from using English law. Nor is there any good Brexit-related reason to avoid English-seated arbitration. Indeed, English-seated arbitration has arguably become more attractive as a result of Brexit, for instance due to the potentially increased availability of anti-suit injunctions from the English courts.

As for the choice of English courts, any concern due to the loss of the Brussels Regulation will often prove to be more theoretical than real. The concern arises particularly where a counterparts assets are predominantly located in the EU, such that a party will have in mind whether or not, in the future, it will be possible to enforce an English court judgment against those assets. Frequently, contracting parties will be able to obtain comfort that the Member States relevant to a particular transaction will still enforce English judgments (and respect the parties choice of forum) straightforwardly under their own local rules. And the Hague Convention also provides a replacement solution that many commercial parties should find sufficient for their contracts going forward. Asymmetrical optional jurisdictional clauses may not attract the protections of the Hague Convention, but they also remain attractive as they keep all options on the table for likely claimants: if enforcement is a concern when a dispute arises, the party benefiting from the optionality in the disputes clause retains the ability (depending on the terms of the clause) to arbitrate or litigate elsewhere and so to take any necessary steps at that stage to avoid any potential enforcement issue that may arise from suing in England.

The available recent data regarding London commercial disputes tends to confirm that commercial parties have not been deterred by Brexit and continue to choose England as a forum for the litigation and arbitration of commercial disputes.

The available statistics for the caseload of the English Commercial Court do not suggest any meaningful move away from the English courts by commercial parties. On the contrary, the Portland Report on Commercial Courts for April 2020 to March 2021 found that the courts had had a record caseload. While the proportion of EU-based litigants using the Commercial Courts has declined somewhat (from 13.5% at the last count before the Brexit vote for 2015-2016 to 11.5% in the most recent report), it remains significant. Indeed, despite the proportional drop, the total number of EU-based litigants using the Commercial Courts has increased. So, the most that can be said based on the statistics is that the growth in use of the Commercial Court is not as great among parties from the EU as those from other regions.

Meanwhile, the major European arbitral institutions, particularly the International Chamber of Commerce International Court of Arbitration (ICC) and the London Court of International Arbitration (LCIA), show an overall trend towards increased numbers of English-seated arbitrations. So, the ICC (a Paris-headquartered institution) registered 114 London-seated arbitrations in 2019, compared with 57 in 2015. The LCIA had more English-seated arbitrations in 2020 (342) than its entire caseload in 2015. And it is clear from both institutions statistics that the arbitrating parties are predominantly international, with UK parties constituting a relatively small minority.

These figures reflect market sentiment. The 2021 Queen Mary University of London/White & Case International Arbitration Survey confirmed that London remained the most popular seat of arbitration (equal with Singapore) among survey respondents, cited by 54% as a preferred seat. Although this represented a slight decrease from the equivalent figure in 2018 (64%), the decrease did not come at the expense of EU Member State seats such as Paris and Geneva (whose election was also slightly down from 2018) but rather the increased popularity of Hong Kong and Singapore. And London was still chosen by a higher proportion of survey respondents than it was in the last such survey before the Brexit vote in 2015 (47%).

Meanwhile, transactional lawyers in London offices of international law firms are, anecdotally (and as suggested by recent financial announcements of some firms) very busy. The English law transactions of today are the disputes of tomorrow, and there is no obvious sign here of any flight from English law or English dispute resolution fora.

Undoubtedly, Englands place in the international disputes market is evolving and will continue to evolve. The Covid-19 pandemic may have accelerated a trend towards more remote hearings and greater use of technology in disputes generally, for example. Meanwhile, economic trends such as the growing focus on green industries and technologies will inevitably alter the shape of the disputes market as well as the wider economy. These developments are not, though, obviously related to Brexit. From the authors personal experience, while commercial parties have certainly been concerned to understand the implications of Brexit for their choice of dispute resolution forum and the governing law of their contracts, few have changed their approach as a result (and those that do either wish to ensure the protection of the Hague Convention or have the leverage to secure an asymmetric jurisdiction clause in their favour, rather than move their disputes to a different jurisdiction altogether).

Brexit is of course still in its infancy. The message from the statistics currently available may be one of instant reassurance both for lawyers and commercial parties who chose to resolve their disputes in England. But it is not a call for complacency. Parties and their lawyers will need to remain astute to legal developments in all relevant jurisdictions and to assessing their needs for the particular circumstances at hand. In doing so, English law, and Englands legal institutions, judiciary, arbitrators and practitioners, will best continue to serve their international users, and retain their trust.

Edward Attenborough and Charles Balmain are dispute resolution partners with White & Case in London

The authors would like to thanks Arthur Lauvaux (associate, White & Case) for his assistance in preparing this article

Any views expressed in this publication are strictly those of the authors and should not be attributed in any way to White & Case LLP

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A false dusk? The outlook for disputes in the UK post-Brexit - ICLG.com

Can you ask Barclays why it refuses to hand over the balance of my mothers bank account which it insisted she close after 40 years? She is 83 and lives in Italy. She was told last September that the bank was closing her account on 28 December because of Brexit. I understand she is one of a number of people who live in Europe and have had their UK accounts similarly closed.

All of her attempts to get her 4,000 balance back have so far failed. Barclays sent her an online registration last autumn, but failed to send her a password to allow her to access the account before it was closed. She has since asked for the money to be paid into her Italian account, but it never seems to happen.

We have called so many times trying to resolve this, and complied with all requests. I even sent the required documentation to the UK via DHL and asked a friend to deliver them by hand to Barclays, but it had no effect.

My mother cannot travel to the UK to retrieve the money, and we despair of ever seeing it again.

PL, Italy

UK banks shutting accounts for customers who live in Europe has been one of the unforeseen outcomes of Brexit, and a major headache for all of those affected.

To give your mother, who did not bank online, such a short period to close the account was hardly helpful, and Barclays has most definitely not covered itself in glory in your subsequent dealings with it.

I suspect her documents were stuck in a backlog of post at the bank, built up as staff worked from home. This is a problem that has affected many firms over the past 18 months.

After I raised the case, Barclays did, at least, move quickly to resolve the problem, and your mothers money was paid into her Italian bank account a few days later.

Barclays has since apologised sincerely for the delays. It says it needed the documents to establish her identity, as the protection of our customers funds and data is one of our highest priorities.

We welcome letters but cannot answer individually. Email us at consumer.champions@theguardian.com or write to Consumer Champions, Money, the Guardian, 90 York Way, London N1 9GU. Please include a daytime phone number. Submission and publication of all letters is subject to our terms and conditions

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Barclays refuses to hand over 4,000 after Brexit account closure - The Guardian

Jonathan Evershed and Mary C. Murphy examine how Sinn Fin responded to Brexit. They argue that its pursuit of Special Status for Northern Ireland represented an attempt to mitigate Brexits risks, rather than to leverage its opportunities. This approach came with political costs for the party, whose recent electoral surge has arguably been in spite of rather than because of it.

On 31 January 2020, during a speech to the Institute of International and European Affairs in Dublin, Sinn Fin Party President, Mary Lou McDonald, described Brexit as the opportunity of a lifetime to complete the Republican project of Irish (re)unification. The speech came in the midst of a dramatic and transformative general election campaign, which would eventually see Sinn Fin returned to the Dil with 37 members of parliament just one less than the largest party, Fianna Fil and, for the first time, the highest share of first preference votes in an Irish general election.

Sinn Fin is now the lead party of opposition in the Republic of Ireland, and it is a prevailing assumption within and beyond Leinster House that it will enter government following the next general election, to be held no later than 2025. It is already a party of government in Northern Ireland. And with the DUP floundering following the denouement of its confidence and supply relationship with the Conservative Party and the imposition of a new border in the Irish Sea, current polling suggests that Sinn Fin could well be returned as the largest party in the Assembly when Northern Irish voters go to the polls next year. Concurrently, in the wake of Brexit, support for Irish unity is polling at all-time highs in Northern Ireland (albeit that such polls must always be taken with a pinch of salt, and that across them, Northern Irelands remaining part of the UK emerges more-or-less consistently as the preference of a majority).

Including by destabilising the UKs territorial constitution, Brexit has presaged a step-change in the tempo and tenor of discussions about a referendum on Irish unity, which the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland is mandated by the Good Friday Agreement to call if it appears likely that a majority in Northern Ireland is liable to favour unification. The new urgency of these constitutional conversations has given rise to a number of recent academic projects, which have sought to bring a degree of clarity to what is at stake in any post-Brexit border poll. To put it plainly, Brexit has made a united Ireland though far from inevitable, and, according to some polls, only at the margins an increasingly immediate and concrete proposition. As the form that Brexit has (both potentially and actually) taken since 2016 has increasingly hardened, this has become ever more the case.

On the face of it, despite Sinn Fins having campaigned against Brexit, it has nonetheless left the party in a position of political strength unprecedented in its history, and its primary policy goal of Irish unity closer than at any time since Ireland was partitioned 100 years ago. Indeed, some of its most vocal critics have, sometimes to the point of farce, sought to characterise Sinn Fin as having actually favoured and even pursued a hard or no-deal Brexit. That Englands difficulty is Irelands opportunity is certainly a long-running rhetorical trend in Irish Republican politics, and there is some suggestion that this may have had a degree of influence on the vigour of Sinn Fins campaign and the voting behaviour of its supporters during the Brexit referendum in 2016.

However, far from having viewed Brexit as a wedge issue, to be leveraged in the pursuit of constitutional transformation, we have found that it has instead been overwhelmingly viewed within Sinn Fin as a threat to be managed. Especially in its potential to disrupt the openness of the Irish border, Brexit has represented grave political, economic, social and existential risks, which have been most acutely felt by nationalist voters in sections of Sinn Fins core constituency, including in the border counties and multiply deprived communities in Belfast and Derry. Throughout the Brexit process between 2016 and 2019, the party was principally concerned with contesting Brexit policy rather than with using Brexit as an opportunity for polity contestation. As one former Sinn Fin MLA neatly summarised:

We are in this dilemma that actually the harder Brexit is, I suspect, the more support there will be for a United Ireland. But despite that, we are trying to mitigate or ameliorate the worst aspects of Brexit.

Sinn Fins approach on Brexit has been framed by its policy of Designated Special Status within the EU for the North of Ireland, which it sought to promote in Brussels through a diplomatic offensive, spear-headed by then MEP for Northern Ireland, Martina Anderson. Anderson was an effective spokesperson, and several of Sinn Fins key Brexit priorities were indeed upheld by the EU. But this was primarily owed to a wider Irish effort, led by the Irish government, into which Sinn Fins approach was largely subsumed. Indeed, Sinn Fins policy of Special Status was only minimally distinct from the approach on Brexit adopted by both the Fine Gael-led government the Fianna Fil opposition in the South, and it diverged little from the policies of the SDLP and Alliance Party in the North. Pulling on what one Sinn Fin member of parliament described as the green jersey, the party largely rallied to the flag on Brexit, with electoral costs across a series of difficult elections in 2018 and 2019.

Critically, and despite claims to the contrary by Sinn Fins political opponents, Special Status was a blueprint for protecting the political-legal status quo rather than a plan to accelerate processes of constitutional change. It was a strategy for managing and mitigating risk, rather than for hastening Irish unity at all costs and by any means necessary.

In the final analysis, Brexit has posed more problems than it has represented opportunities for Sinn Fin, and it is ultimately unclear that the party has benefited from it per se. The new-found and unprecedented strength of the partys current position owes much to the weaknesses and tactical mistakes of other political actors (particularly in the DUP), and of decidedly non-Brexit-related domestic political factors, which includes an ongoing housing crisis in the Republic of Ireland. And it comes with its own political risks. On the cusp of holding office on both sides of the Irish border, Sinn Fin continues to face a number of tough organisational challenges, strategic decisions and policy compromises.

_____________________

About the Author

This blog draws on the authors published work in the British Journal of Politics and International Relations.

Jonathan Evershed is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the Department of English at University College Cork, where his research as part of the ERDF-funded Ports, Past and Present project explores the impact of Brexit on political, cultural, and economic relationships across the Irish Sea.

Mary C. Murphy is Senior Lecturer in the Department of Government and Politics at University College Cork. She hold a Jean Monnet Chair in European Integration, and is the author of Northern Irelands Future: Negotiating Brexits Unique Case (Agenda Publishing, 2018). Their book, Northern Ireland After Brexit is forthcoming with Agenda Publishing.

Mary Lou McDonald talking to mediabySinn Finis licensed underCC BY 2.0.

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Far from having viewed Brexit as an opportunity for constitutional transformation, Sinn Fin has instead viewed it as a threat to be managed - British...

Since Brexit, the rules on passport validity for British visitors to the European Union have tightened. But the UK government tells travellers the regulations are worse than they actually are.

After requests from The Independent, the Home Office has taken down its defective post-Brexit passport checker.

But the government continues to publish unhelpful information about the validity of British travel documents in the European Union.

These are the key questions and answers based on European Union rules, not the UK governments interpretation of them.

Whats changed?

While the UK was in the European Union, British passports were valid up to and including their expiry date for travel within the EU.

Since the end of the Brexit transition phase, British passport holders are treated as third country nationals with stipulations about passport expiry dates and limits on length of stay almost everywhere in Europe.

What is required for my passport to be valid?

The requirements are crisply expressed here on the Travel page of the European Unions Your Europe site: If you are a non-EU national wishing to visit or travel within the EU, you will need a passport

This does not apply for trips to Ireland, for which there are no limits on passport validity and for which a passport is not legally mandatory for British travellers, though some airlines insist on it.

Why the line about issued within the previous 10 years?

For many years, until September 2018, the UK had a generous policy of allowing credit for unspent time when renewing a passport, issuing documents valid for up to 10 years and nine months.

So a passport issued on 30 July 2011 could show an expiry date of 30 April 2022.

This was fine around Europe and the world for decade until Brexit, whereupon a longstanding rule kicked in. For non-members of the EU, a passport is deemed to have expired after 10 years.

That passport issued on 30 July 2011 will be regarded as expiring on 30 July 2021. If its holder attempted to board a plane to the European Union on 1 August 2021, it would have insufficient validity and the airline would be obliged to turn them away even though the British passport has almost eight months to run.

Until September 2018 the government appeared unaware of the problem. Once the issue was identified, the practice of giving up to nine months grace ended abruptly.

Do the authorities apply both conditions together?

Apparently not. The European Union makes it clear that both tests must be met but that they are independent of each other.

That passport issued on 30 July 2011 would therefore be valid for admission to the EU on 29 July 2021, after which the additional validity still works a stay for a month would require validity up to 29 November 2021, within the passports power.

However, you are strongly advised not to test this point. Transport operators may well take a hard line against such passenger. While a full legal test case would be welcomed, you might well not want to be it.

In addition, the UK government says: Any extra months on your passport over 10 years may not count towards the six months needed.

Six months? I thought the Europeans only wanted three months.

They do. The rule is three months after your intended day of leaving the European Union (except Ireland). But the UK government has done its own bit of extrapolation presumably in the hope of bottom covering. Because any trip can theoretically be up to 90 days, the Home Office says: You need to have at least six months left on an adult or child passport to travel to most countries in Europe.

Six months remaining when you enter, equals three months remaining when you leave, the government says. Except this means many travellers are given false negatives: a traveller with five months validity remaining on the day she goes away can cheerfully plan a trip in Europe for a couple of months, but under the UK governments incorrect assertion she would not be allowed into Europe.

Which is legally superior: European rules or the UKs unusual interpretation?

Europes: the destinations attitude is what counts. Earlier this month Jet2, not unreasonably, followed UK advice and barred a number of passengers from flights to Europe. After The Independent pointed out that this was in breach of European air passengers rights rules, Jet2 apologised and compensated the affected holidaymakers.

We have informed all leading airlines about the correct legal position.

But individual carriers can create their own variations. Ryanair passengers must confirm: I understand that if I am using a British passport to travel, it must be valid for a minimum of six months from the date I enter any EU Member State.

What about children?

They are particularly annoying, or at least their passports are, because they are typically valid for five years (and any extra credit).

The Home Offices defective passport checker stripped all extra credit, which was both wrong and unhelpful.

The online checker has now been switched off.

When are you going to renew your passport?

When it nears nine years, nine months of validity.

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Travel to Europe: the post-Brexit passport rules - The Independent

For the first time in a generation, the UK has the freedom to make and implement rules that put British businesses and consumers first freeing businesses from overbearing bureaucracy and reducing costs for consumers, whilst boosting competition, innovation and growth across the economy.

The consultation launched today marks an initial response to the report by the independent Taskforce on Innovation, Growth and Regulatory Reform (TIGRR) commissioned by the Prime Minister, exploring a number of recommendations on the UKs regulatory framework.

This includes looking at ways to dispense with unnecessary red tape that no longer meets the UKs needs, including those the UK inherited when it was a former member of the EU for example reintroducing a way to offset new regulations, like the One-In-Two-Out method whereby to introduce a new regulation, unnecessary regulations would need to be removed.

To enable innovative companies to trial ground-breaking ideas safely, the Government could also look to make more use and impact of sandboxes, where certain regulations are lifted to test new products in a real-world setting, under the regulators supervision this was another reform recommended by TIGRR.

Another TIGRR proposal to move away from the EUs excessive use of the precautionary principle inherited in the UK and adopt a proportionality principle in our regulatory framework has been set out. This would mean regulation is reset to focus on outcomes, not process, and be proportionate to the issues and impacts on businesses and people.

Proposals set out today also look at regulation across its lifetime, including:

Lord David Frost, Minister of State at the Cabinet Office, said:

Now is the time to think boldly about how we regulate, as we seize our new opportunities as an independent nation.

For the first time in a generation, we are free to implement rules that put the UK first. This is the next step in driving forward ambitious reform, following the work of the Taskforce on Innovation, Growth and Regulatory Reform.

Our job is to help people and businesses thrive across the UK. That was what taking back control was about. Reforming the way we regulate will be a big part of delivering that for people.

Business Secretary Kwasi Kwarteng said:

Taking back control means setting regulation in a way that works best for British businesses, workers and our wider economy.

As an independent trading nation once more, we will use our newfound freedoms to promote competition, unleash innovation and enable the development of new technologies without imposing unwieldy burdens on business.

By taking a more nimble approach, suited to our national interest, we can maintain our valued high standards and cement the UKs status as an attractive place to start and grow business.

The consultation sets out five principles that will underpin the Governments approach to regulation to ensure it benefits the British people:

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UK to seize Brexit opportunities and unleash innovation by overhauling approach to red tape: 22 July 2021 - GOV.UK

Images of empty supermarket shelves have become ubiquitous in recent weeks due to the so-called pingdemic, but the staffing crisis caused by people self-isolating has also led to widespread disruption in the museum sector.

It is one of a number of staffing impacts playing out in museums across the UK this summer as they grapple with the combined effects of Covid and Brexit.

The Jewish Museum London is one of many smaller museums to be affected by lack of capacity due to the self-isolation rules at one point, 30% of the team was self-isolating after being pinged.

Managing the situation is a logistical headache, says interim director Frances Jeens. Many staff have to use public transport to get to work, which greatly increases their chances of being asked to self-isolate. When they are notified they have to leave work immediately, which Jeens says can throw a whole day of planned activities into disarray.

The museum is dealing with the situation by putting new rotas in place to separate staff and ensure there is still capacity if someone from one team has to self-isolate.

Weve worked out that due to the age of some of our staff it will be early October before everyone who wants to be is double jabbed and therefore doesnt need to self-isolate after close contact, says Jeens. Feels a long way off.

For many museums, the impact of staff shortages due to self-isolating will be the difference between being able to open to the public and having to temporarily close again says William Tregaskes, manager of the Cynon Valley Museum in south Wales.

In such a small organisation, one person contracting Covid without systems in place means we could see the whole museum have to shut due to staff and trustees self-isolating and ensuring the safety of all staff and volunteers.

This has already happened elsewhere; in June, Nottinghams National Justice Museum and City of Caves experience were forced to close temporarily after a staff member tested positive for Covid.

Tregaskes, who also runs the FoHMuseums network, says it is vital to ensure the views of front-of-house workers are considered at this time.

It is incredibly important that staff listen to FoH and ensure their continued safety, he says. Protecting staff with perspex screens, mask wearing, etc. could help reduce the risk of staff having to self-isolate due to contact in the museum because of the measures being maintained.

Staff capacity in museums has also been hit by low numbers of volunteers, many of whom are older and have been hesitant to return during the pandemic.

An employee at one small, volunteer-led museum says her institution has been forced to halve its opening days from six to three per week because of the lack of available volunteers. Our revenue is plummeting and we cannot sustain much volunteer-managed venue hire either, she says.

Ditchling Museum of Arts + Craft in East Sussex has also been affected by the lack of volunteers, says director Steph Fuller. Covid safety measures mean we need more members of staff on in order to open safely thats too much responsibility to put on volunteers, she says. The museum also had to find cover for furloughed staff who have accrued large amounts of annual leave.

It has reduced its weekly opening days as a result of these issues.

Fuller has also experienced difficulties in recruiting new staff one recent role took much longer than usual to fill and attracted far fewer applications, she says.

Although its difficult to narrow these recruitment issues down to a single cause, Fuller says Brexit may be part of the problem this summer marks the first tourist season with the UKs strict new immigration rules in place.

Ditchling recently lost one European member of staff who would have stayed if not for Brexit. We can certainly see the impact of Brexit in our visitor profile, she adds. We have virtually no EU visitors now. Being in the south-east we would often have EU students who stayed around and volunteered here. I think because of Covid we all took our eye off the ball on Brexit.

The museum is re-examining how it operates in the long term to address these issues. Fuller believes the move to home-working could open up new recruitment opportunities for museums Ditchling recently employed a freelancer who prefers working from home to fill a role that did not need to be done in-house.

Were thinking about the people were advertising to and where were advertising how we can get the word out in a slightly different way, she says.

In order to attract and retain staff, museums need to benchmark their salaries against comparable local employers but Ditchling has been hampered in doing this by the stipulation that organisations in receipt of the UK Government's Culture Recovery Fund grants must exercise pay restraint for 18 months post-grant. It's quite unhelpful, says Fuller. You've got to be able to pay the going rate.

A resourcing manager at one large heritage employer says he is also struggling to recruit staff, particularly in commercial areas. Brexit has tightened the overall recruitment market, he says, meaning more employers are now competing for UK staff and wage inflation is putting some skill areas out of reach for the charity sector.

His organisation has also found that many furloughed staff who found interim roles have been reluctant to return to their previous jobs now that the sector is reopening.

These recruitment challenges are exacerbated by the exceptionally high demand for seasonal staff this year even compared to pre-Covid times as the UK tourism market is saturated by staycationers.

So many people desperately want to continue to work in the sector and the fact that we are experiencing staff shortages istroubling, says Tamsin Russell, the Museums Association's workforce development officer.

We need to think creatively about how we recruit,enabling as many people as possible to work within it. Meeting their needs, part-time hours and flexible working are ways of doing this, as well as looking beyond the sector and adopting recruitment practices that attract and include rather than alienate and exclude.

Continue reading here:

Museums face double whammy as Covid and Brexit affect staffing - Museums Association

Its been two years since Boris Johnson entered Downing Street.

Every day through his actions, he demonstrates why he is unfit for any public office, never mind the office of Prime Minister and why its high time Scotlands future was in Scotlands hands, not Boris Johnsons.

Here are just some of the many reasons.

Struggling to force through Brexit, Boris Johnson suspended parliamentary democracy to deprive MPs of the opportunity to hold the UK government to account.

By attempting to bypass Parliament, Boris Johnson acted like a tin-pot dictator and showed utter contempt for democracy.

Thanks to pressure from SNP MPs, his moves to shut down Parliament were ruled unlawful and unconstitutional by Scotlands highest court, and then by the UK Supreme Court.

The man who repeatedly lied to MPs, misled the Queen, and used dirty tricks in an attempt to force through an extreme Brexit through the backdoor, is simply unfit for office.

In the height of the pandemic, Boris Johnsons ministers secretly directed funds from an emergency Covid contract supposed to be used for things like PPE for our brave NHS workers to carry out secretive polling on the Union.

It comes after a series of revelations of Tory cronyism with hundreds of thousands of pounds in public money being handed to Tory friends and donors, with little to no scrutiny and transparency.

When challenged about this gross misuse of public funds by Ian Blackford, Boris Johnson said he could not think of a better use of public funds.

In 2014, the Better Together parties promised that Scotlands powers would never be altered without the express consent of Holyrood.

Now, through the Internal Market Bill that fundamentally undermines devolution, Boris Johnson is shattering these promises.

The Bill, which broke international law, allows an unelected and unaccountable Westminster body to overrule the Scottish Parliaments decisions. With a stroke of a pen, Westminster can challenge policies made in Scotland and its already doing so by taking the Scottish Government to court for passing a Bill to strengthen childrens rights.

Boris Johnsons Brexit Deal has hit jobs and living standards hard at the worst possible time.

From a sell-out of fishing communities, to the betrayal of Scotlands farmers and the removal of opportunities for young people, Scotland is paying the price of Boris Johnsons Brexit.

Boris Johnsons Brexit deal, with all the red tape and chaos it caused, lead to fishing boats being forced to sit in the docks for weeks depriving fisherpeople and their families an income to live on. And thats not the only sector Boris Johnson has sold out.

Boris Johnson was promising to stand up for Scottish farmers and crofters. Yet, in a desperate attempt to get a trade deal with anyone, he sold the farm from under their feet.

The Australian Deputy Prime Minister said, The big winners, in the UK-Australian trade deal, are Australian producers, Australian farmers, indeed Australia full stop Im not worried about the Welsh, Scottish & NI beef producers.

The Tories have treated Scottish fishing as expendable and now theyre doing the same to Scottish farmers. The UK governments own analysis said a deal with Australia would only be worth an 0.02% increase in GDP over 15 years, and thats under an optimistic scenario.

It wont even cover 1% of the lost opportunities from Europes markets due to Brexit, all while negatively impacting Scotlands agricultural sector.

The heavy price of Brexit is already clear for all to see. Analysis from the Food and Drink Federation last month revealed EU sales dropped by 47% in the first three months of 2021 to a ten-year low hitting the UK economy with a 2billion loss.

In 2016, as part of the Vote Leave campaign, Boris Johnson and Priti Patel issued a commitment that:

There will be no change for EU citizens already lawfully resident in the UK. These EU citizens will automatically be granted indefinite leave to remain in the UK and will be treated no less favourably than they are at present.

Scottish Government repeatedly urged to grant EU citizens an automatic right to remain, but Boris Johnson and Priti Patel decided to force EU citizens to apply to stay in their own homes.

Worse still, they have threatened the rights of thousands of vulnerable EU citizens with an arbitrary hard deadline with reports showing that many people who have legally lived and worked in the UK for years could now be criminalised and deprived of basic rights, such as the right to work, rent, or access the NHS.

The SNP will use what powers we have to limit the impact of Boris Johnsons right-wing policies and the damage theyll cause to Scotland.

But the only way to guarantee getting rid of a Prime Minister who breaks the law, strips citizens of their rights, denies democracy and imposes an extreme Brexit against our will, is taking our future into our own hands with independence.

Independence means that Scotland can decide the kind of country we want to be free from the damaging decisions of Tory governments we havent voted for in over 60 years.

It means having all the powers to create a more welcoming, more equal and fairer society just like other European countries of similar size to Scotland, such as Denmark or Ireland.

Once the pandemic is over, people in Scotland must have the choice to put Scotlands future firmly in Scotlands hands not those of Boris Johnson and his right-wing ilk.

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Prime Minister Boris Johnson: two years of Brexit lies, contempt and power grabs Scottish National Party - SNP

The author and philosopher has been a vocal critic of Brexit and has continued to campaign for Britain to return to the EU. And now, Mr Grayling has predicted the UK will rejoin the bloc in less than 10 years.

Taking to Twitter, the rejoiner said: "We will be back in the EU in less than 10 years.

"Here's how: electoral reform, through progressive alliance for next election.

"A reformed parliament with LDs & Greens in the coalition will be receptive to another say on EU membership.

"We will win that referendum conclusively."

Another person said: "Electoral reform? Careful what you wish for.

"Had there been PR in 2015 how many seats would UKIP have won?

"Not to mention the PR referendum a decade ago."

Someone else commented: "Politically naive and downright ignorant of the British public.

"A case of upper-class twaddle."

Many others pointed out that the EU will not exist in 10 years' time following the rise of Euroscepticism across the bloc.

Earlier this month, Mr Grayling outlined a plan to take down Boris Johnson Johnson in the next election.

He tweeted: A progressive alliance and electoral reform are our salvation.

Citizens must form relentless pressure groups to get the opposition parties in their areas to field a single candidate on a PR platform for the next election - afterwards the parties can return to tribal squabbling.

His plan comes despite the British public not expected to vote in the next general election until May 2024.

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'Rejoin will win next referendum!' Grayling outlines plot to force UK back into EU by 2030 - Daily Express