On Wednesday 28 June 2017 UKELA co-chairs Andrew Bryce and Richard Macrory announced the forthcoming publication of a series of ‘Brexit and Environmental Law’ reports. The event at E3G was chaired by UKELA patron and chairman of the climate change think tank, Tom Burke.

The speakers outlined the full complexity of rolling-over environmental law after withdrawing from the European Union. They gave a taster of the first five reports which UKELA will publish on issues ranging from international environmental law to enforcement, Euratom to environmental standard setting. They announced a major UKELA Brexit conference in October 2017, to be chaired by a Supreme Court judge, with panellists including senior government lawyers and leading practitioners.

• A press release can be found here
• Coverage of the event can be found here in The Guardian, Business Green and Compliance Week
• A full recording of the event, including questions from the audience, will be available shortly

In the weeks since our last post we have also had a surprising General Election result, a cabinet reshuffle, the Queen’s Speech and the start of Brexit negotiations. In light of all that has happened, we thought we would highlight some things from the web which caught our attention in case you missed them:

• The Bar Council published the third edition of their Brexit Paper. Topics covered have been expanded and now include Environmental Law, Fisheries, Agriculture, Technical regulations and CJEU Jurisprudence.
• The Institute for Government published a thorough paper on the status of European Court decisions after Brexit. They have also released a handy explainer for the Queen’s Speech and interesting analyses of the implications that support from the DUP and the result of the General Election will have on the Government’s Brexit negotiations.
• Greener UK launched their Brexit Risk Tracker. As most of the UK’s environmental protections stem from EU law they could be changed as a result of Brexit. This new tool aims help people track the level of risk posed to each environmental policy area and gives the UK government a traffic-light rating for its commitments to, and comments about, keeping current levels of environmental protections after leaving the EU.
• Dr Jean-Pierre Gauci and Professor Robert McCorquodale from the British Institute of International and Comparative Law (BIICL) published their report on ‘Brexit Transitional Arrangements and Public International Law’. The paper focuses on the legal basis in international law for transitional measures in relation to the financial services sector, but also sheds light on the wider international legal issues associated with Brexit (a summary of the report can also be found on the The UK Constitutional Law Association blog). This analysis was produced for Linklaters LLP who subsequently published...
• ...'The Great Repeal Bill - Domesticating the EU acquis', which Linklaters LLP produced with The International Regulatory Strategy Group. This report discusses ways in which EU law can be ‘domesticated’, and sets out ways in which the Repeal Bill might work utilise a series of eight general principles and give rules, rather than a plethora of statutory instruments and far-reaching powers. The report focuses on the financial services sector, but we are examining how these principles might work in the context of environmental law.
• The UCL Constitution Unit published a blog post reporting on their event ‘Legal and Constitutional Implications of Brexit’, jointly hosted with the House of Commons Library earlier in the month.
• The Irish Times has published a report on the joint Northern Ireland Environmental Link/Environmental Pillar/European Parliament conference ‘Brexit: Implications for the Environment on the Island of Ireland’. More on this from the RSPB blog.
• And finally... UKLegalFutures has launched a new website, which hosts a wealth of useful materials from their previous events and seminars looking at the legal implications of Brexit.

That's it from us for now. We will report back after the UKELA Annual Conference in Nottingham this weekend.