EU Disintegration and Environmental Standards: What does Brexit mean for Environmental Governance in the EU and UK?

The European Union (EU) has distinguished itself as a global leader in high environmental standards. Over the decades, it has promulgated stringent regulations across different environmental policy areas among its member states and within the common market. Also, with its large market size advantage and stronger regulatory capacity, the EU has been successful in externalising its environmental regulations to non-member states.

As a member state, the United Kingdom (UK) shared much the same environmental policies and standards as the EU, with the majority of the environmental laws made at the EU level. Therefore, the departure of the UK from the Union, Brexit, presents numerous questions about the future of EU environmental standards and their influence on the UK. First, with the Brexit rhetoric of ‘taking back control’ with emphasis on deregulation, it is unclear the extent to which the UK will dismantle or diverge from EU regulatory regimes. It is also important to explore the post-Brexit relationships and the level of influence of the EU on its former member.

This panel brings together researchers looking at different areas of EU and UK environmental policies and regulations to discuss the implications of Brexit for environmental governance in the UK and EU. The discussion will focus on institutional power and influence among the various actors in the design and implementation of post-Brexit environmental policies and schemes. It will also look at the ramifications of disintegration and/or divergence on the EU’s normative power as an environmental regulatory hegemon.

The European Union (EU) has long played a leading role in the setting of global environmental standards through multilateral cooperation. However, recent scholars assert that the EU has been more effective in contemporary times to extend its environmental policy goals unilaterally to other territories through the so-called “Brussels Effect”. Proponents of the Brussels Effect theory suggest that the EU’s internal market size, regulatory capacity and the inelastic nature of its regulations attract global market actors to adopt its stringent standards voluntarily. The UK played an active and influential role in making the EU the regulatory hegemon until its departure (Brexit). However, there were several environmental policy areas where the UK did not agree with EU regulatory decisions. In some of these policy areas, such as pesticide, biotechnologies and veterinary medicines regulations, the UK government was more aligned with other trading partners. The unfolding events present novel questions about the strength of the Brussels Effect post-Brexit, and how it will continue to attract the UK, a former member. This paper uses the case of the EU’s neonicotinoid pesticide restrictions, prophylactic antibiotics ban, and gene editing regulations as a case study to analyse the strength and effectiveness of the Brussels Effect in drawing the UK to the EU’s environmental regulatory regimes post-Brexit. The paper argues that the historical institutional paths, such as high supply chain linkages and some aspects of the UK-EU Trade and Cooperation Agreement (TCA), will reinforce the ‘Brussels effect’ to draw the UK close to the EU.

On the 1st of January 2021, the United Kingdom (UK) formally exited the European Union (EU) and ceased to be subject to EU chemical regulation requirements. Prior to Brexit UK environmental policy and chemical regulation was largely controlled by a series of laws and commitments set out by the EU. With its large internal market, sophisticated regulatory capability, and stringent regulatory framework the EU has become the world’s leading regulatory state, regularly influencing industrial decisions and practices across the globe - particularly within highly regulated areas such as chemicals. At the time of writing, there has been limited academic analysis of the implications of Brexit for UK chemical regulation. Through the analysis and review of key documents and reports on UK-EU chemical regulation and policy this paper presents a comprehensive and robust analysis of the rhetoric and commitments made by the UK government on chemical regulation and policy, to map the impacts of Brexit and evaluate the gap between rhetoric and reality. Using the REACH regulation as a case study, the paper argues that UK and EU chemicals regulatory regimes are now effectively evolving independently. However, the UK’s scope to diverge from the EU is curtailed by its international commitments, trade, and desire to maintain access to the EU’s single market. The regulatory shadow of the EU is therefore limiting the UK’s ability to ‘take back control’.

The United Kingdom experienced an era of consistent agricultural policy under EU membership, with most British farmers eligible for basic payments (BPS) under the Common Agriculture Policy (CAP). A consequence of Brexit is the required replacement of EU agriculture policy and the establishment of a new system to designate payments to farmers. In England, the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) is designing a three-tiered system of different Environmental Land Management (ELM) schemes that will work together to try to replace the former CAP system and compensate farmers for producing ‘public goods’. The design of the ELM systems was intended to be rooted in the practice of policy co-design, with the expectation that the government would work continuously with relevant stakeholders to design impactful and lasting policies. This paper aims to evaluate the progress of policy co-design in England and assess the post-Brexit policy transition from the perspective of British farmers. The paper argues that farmers' voices have been lost in the co-design of new ELM policies and that Defra’s initial goals of the policy transition have been overshadowed by a lack of commitment to co-design, limitations of institutional power, and misunderstanding of the time needed for comprehensive policy change.