UK in legal battle over EU single market membership

PanARMENIAN.Net - The government is facing a legal battle over whether the UK stays inside the single market after it has left the EU, the BBC has learned.

Lawyers say uncertainty over the UK's European Economic Area membership means ministers could be stopped from taking Britain out of the single market.

They will argue the UK will not leave the EEA automatically when it leaves the EU and Parliament should decide.

But the government said EEA membership ends when the UK leaves the EU.

Lawyers expect there to be a legal challenge to decide whether it is up to Parliament or government to make the decision to take the UK out of the single market.

If the courts back this assessment and give Parliament the final say over EEA membership, then MPs could vote to ensure that Britain stays in the single market until a long-term trading relationship with the EU has been agreed.

The pro-single market think tank British Influence is writing to Brexit Secretary David Davis to inform him that it will seek a formal judicial review of the government's position.

The group warned that if the government did not get a clear legal opinion it could potentially end up acting outside the law.

The EEA was set up in the 1990s to extend the single market to non-EU members like Norway, Iceland and Liechtenstein.

All EU member states are in the European Economic Area and it had been assumed that when Britain leaves the EU it would automatically leave the EEA as well.

But some lawyers argue that leaving the EEA would not be automatic and would happen only if Britain formally withdraws by triggering Article 127 of the EEA agreement.

The legal question is focused on whether the UK is a member of the EEA in its own right or because it is a member of the EU.

Professor George Yarrow, chairman of the Regulatory Policy Institute and emeritus professor at Hertford College, Oxford, said: "There is no provision in the EEA Agreement for UK membership to lapse if the UK withdraws from the EU.

"The only exit mechanism specified is Article 127, which would need to be triggered."

Jolyon Maugham QC, of Devereux chambers, said: "My own view is that you do not automatically leave the EEA. Given Article 127 provides an express mechanism for withdrawal, it implicitly excludes other implied mechanisms for withdrawal such as ceasing to be a member of the EU."