It was a law that was to remove some 4,000 pieces of legislation inherited from the European Union by the end of 2023. But this “Retained EU Law Bill” adopted on January 18, 2023 by the British Parliament will be less ambitious than expected. According The Daily Telegraph, Business and Trade Minister Kemi Badenoch announced at a meeting with Conservative MPs on Monday (April 24) that only 800 laws would be scrapped by the end of the year. The text “will put an end to the supremacy of European law, by removing unnecessary and restrictive European laws by the end of the year”, the ministry said on Friday morning.
“Under the initial plan concocted by the executive, and currently in the midst of parliamentary shuttle, any law that was not explicitly retained or updated by next December 31 would have been automatically repealed,” explain The Guardian, anti-Brexit daily. This principle had been described as “undemocratic” by legal experts or trade unions, because it gave ministers “unprecedented” power to “update, reform or abolish laws without the usual parliamentary control”, continues the newspaper. .
Concerns in economic circles
Economic circles had expressed their concerns about the sudden disappearance of thousands of regulations, sometimes several decades old, relating to consumer safety or social rights. In the House of Lords, some heavyweights had warned that they risked considerably delaying the examination in the face of the titanic work of combing through 4,000 regulations.
On the side of pro-Brexit parliamentarians, on the other hand, “the news is akin to a new betrayal, after the signing in February of an agreement on Northern Ireland disputed in their ranks”, underlines The Daily Telegraph. During “heated” exchanges with Conservative MPs, Kemi Badenoch, a rising star in his party, “explained that it was not possible to examine everything in such a short time”, continues the daily.
The Brexiteers, themselves, “see Kemi Badenoch’s backpedaling rather as an abdication in the face of pressure from the administration, deemed hostile to leaving the EU”. And fear, concludes The Daily Telegraph“that the rest of European laws end up never being repealed”.