Schedule of Retained EU law

Schedule of retained EU Law that will be revoked or sunset by 31 December 2023.

Retained EU law (REUL) was established by The European Union (Withdrawal) Act 2018 to ensure legal certainty and continuity immediately after Brexit, by preserving all EU and EU-derived law as it stood immediately before the UK’s departure. However, retained EU law was never intended to sit on the statute book indefinitely.

The Retained EU Law (Revocation and Reform) Bill allows the United Kingdom to take the next step in reasserting the sovereignty of Parliament. It will end the special status of retained EU law in the UK statute book and will enable the government to more easily amend, revoke and replace retained EU law.

On 10 May an amendment was tabled to replace the current sunset in the Bill with a list of all of the retained EU laws that we intend to revoke under the Bill by the end of 2023.

The list covers each piece of legislation being revoked and the reason why it is being removed from the statute book at the end of 2023. It includes a significant amount of REUL that is defunct and unnecessary now we have left the EU. This is an efficient way of removing such legacy regulation from our statute book and represents good lawmaking. The schedule also includes some REUL which we can now remove which had been designed in a way which was clearly contrary to the needs and requirements of the UK. For example The Port Services Regulations set out reporting and consultation requirements designed for the largely publicly-owned EU ports sector, which place unnecessary burdens on the predominantly private-sector UK port operators.

The government has already revoked or reformed over 1,000 EU laws since our exit. In addition to the list of around 600 we propose to revoke directly through the REUL Bill, the Financial Services and Markets Bill and the Procurement Bill will revoke around a further 500 pieces of REUL.

We are committed to lightening the regulatory burden on businesses and helping to spur economic growth, and our Edinburgh Reforms of UK financial services include over 30 regulatory reforms to unlock investment and boost growth in towns and cities across the UK.

However, this is far from the limit of our ambition. The government will continue to review the REUL not already revoked or reformed or planned for revocation this year to identify further opportunities for reform.

As a down payment on our commitment to deliver meaningful reform, our regulatory reform announcement Smarter Regulation to Grow the Economy, published on 10 May 2023, sets out our intention to reform regulations and remove burdens on businesses.

We announced changes that will reduce disproportionate EU-derived reporting requirements that could save businesses around £1 billion a year. This was the first in a series of announcements the government will make in the coming months on reforming regulation to drive growth.