The first sentence here: yes - but Article 13(1) has a “notwithstanding” provision - IDS should appreciate the effect of that because “notwithstanding” is in clause 45 of the Internal Market Bill.
So the rule that NI is subject to the Union Customs Code (Reg 952/2013) trumps the “UK customs territory provision. The magic of “notwithstanding”.
The second and third sentence: yes, “at risk” is to be defined: but defined by the Joint Committee (EU + UK). Not the EU.
The EU is also dualist in relation to international law. So what? The EU isn’t criticising the U.K. for being dualist: it’s criticising the UK for avowedly and admittedly breaching its international obligations, in an agreement for which @MPIainDS voted with enthusiasm.
The obligation to collect EU tariffs on GB-NI goods movements (outside the exceptional “not at risk” and “commercial processing” categories) is expressly conferred by Article 5 of the Protocol.
The UK Parliament has always had the power in UK law to refuse to honour the UK’s international obligations. S.38 of the Withdrawal Act just repeats that position. But that does not mean that the EU accepted that the UK could renege on its obligations just because Parlt said so.
The British people (OK, only a minority of them but, hey, that’s our system) voted for an “oven ready” withdrawal agreement, for which @MPIainDS voted enthusiastically and urged voters to endorse.
• • •
Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to
force a refresh
1. It is incorrect to say that mobility arrangements are an "EU competence". Plenty of EU member states have mobility agreements with third countries.
What is true, and is perhaps what de Fossard is (inaccurately) trying to get at, is that there is debate within the EU as to how mobility agreements with the UK should be handled, with the Commission trying to assert its competence (as it tends to do).
To show why it’s poor, all I need to do is to refer him to a few paragraphs of the judgment setting out what was the legal issue that @UKSupremeCourt had to resolve.
To summarise the summary: legislation requires an environmental impact assessment (EIA); the local authority decided that the EIA didn’t need to include an assessment of the impact on the climate of oil produced by the site; was it lawful for it to take that view?
The 🐘 in the room that it fails to confront (though sometimes hints at): that companies operate in a world where the public expects them to uphold standards in conduct and recruitment and they will suffer *commercially* if they don’t.
An example is the hand-wringing discussion of the growth of ESG funds that simply fails to explain why they’ve grown (the obvious answer being the inconvenient one that they respond to public demand).
Others - see eg - have dealt with the “no big negative impact” claim here (and it isn’t “assume”: it’s looking at the evidence and applying standard analysis). But a couple of points on “and so little use has been made of the opportunities [Brexit] offers”
The current government has taken - in rafts of legislation since 2019 - enormous powers to change EU regulatory rules. That was so even before the Retained EU Law Act (REULA) gave them even greater powers to do so, largely without needing to involve Parliament.
Have they used them? Despite the huge political pressure on them, and every incentive on individual ministers, to find “Brexit opportunities”, hardly at all.
The concerns set out by @GeorgeMonbiot here have powerful and authoritative backing from the 2022 @CMAgovUK report into children’s care. Its conclusion:
Since then, the inability of the children in care system to deal adequately with children in care with complex needs has led to an explosion in “Deprivation of Liberty Orders” (DOLs) - so many that there is now a special court to deal with them. judiciary.uk/launch-of-nati…
Some brief comments on the European Commission’s proposal to get a mandate to negotiate a youth mobility agreement with the UK. ec.europa.eu/commission/pre…
1. The EU is not there yet. The mandate has to be agreed by the Council of Ministers: probably by qualified majority. And it isn’t clear whether a final agreement would need to be ratified by all Member States as well as the EU itself.
2. If the EU does agree a mandate, that is likely to slam the door on any attempt by the UK to negotiate youth mobility agreements with individual Member States (because they have a duty of sincere cooperation). So any agreement would have to cover (say) 🇧🇬 as well as (say) 🇫🇷.