Lost in Transition?

With less than a year to go until the two year negotiating period comes to an end, hardly anyone still doubts that Brexit is a complex process. A transition period – agreed in principle by the EU and the UK in the draft withdrawal agreement - is considered necessary to ensure an orderly Brexit. The rationale behind it is twofold: nobody expects an agreement on the future relationship between the UK and the EU to be negotiated and ratified by 29 March 2019; and even if it were, there would not be enough time for governments, traders, and individuals to prepare for its entry into force. Given there is no political appetite for an extension of the period for negotiating the withdrawal agreement, a transition based on the status quo of the UK’s EU membership is the only way to avoid the EU-UK relationship finding itself in a disruptive limbo with trade on the basis WTO rules and other forms of cooperation either not happening or based on largely out-dated international treaties. As this contribution aims to show, a status quo transition sounds simple but, like all things Brexit, putting it in place will be legally challenging. This paper distinguishes four dimensions to transition: the UK-EU dimension; the EU-internal dimension; the UK-internal dimension; and the external dimension. It will discuss key challenges pertaining to each of these dimensions.