Brexit Under The Withdrawal Agreement: The Implications For Disputes

It now seems inevitable that the UK will leave the EU on 31 January 2020 at 11pm GMT under the terms of the Withdrawal Agreement concluded between the UK and the EU on 19 October 2019. In this post, we consider the implications for commercial litigation involving the English courts, both during the transition period established under the Withdrawal Agreement (which ends on 31 December 2020) and following the end of the transition period. We have also updated our decision tree on the enforcement of English judgments in the EU post-transition, which you can access here.

Although the Withdrawal Agreement provides that the transition period may be extended for "up to 1 or 2 years" by agreement before 1 July 2020, the UK government has ruled out any extension in the legislation implementing the Withdrawal Agreement which is currently working its way through Parliament (the European Union (Withdrawal Agreement) Bill 2019-2020). That could be changed by further legislation,