Published 22 June 2022
Last updated 4 September 2023 — See all updates
Brexit
opportunities catalogue of retained EU law and interactive
dashboard
List of
retained EU laws
Details
In September 2021, the government announced the review into the
substance of retained EU law (REUL) to determine which departments,
policy areas and sectors of the economy contain the most
REUL.
The REUL dashboard showcases
the outcome of this review and subsequent further work by
departments as an authoritative catalogue of REUL.
The public is invited to explore this catalogue to build an
understanding of how much EU-derived legislation sits on the UK
statute book and scrutinise legislation.
Background
REUL is a category of
domestic law created at the end of the transition period. It is
made up of certain pieces of direct EU legislation that were ‘cut
and pasted’ onto the UK statute book. REUL can include legislation that is
primarily designed to fulfil domestic policy objectives or other
international commitments, where legislation also implements EU
obligations.
The catalogue of REUL can be
accessed via Microsoft Power BI, which hosts the third iteration
of the interactive REUL
dashboard. The new data included in this update was collected by
departments in April 2023 as part of an ongoing cross-government
collaborative exercise to identify REUL that did not otherwise have a clear
departmental owner. This exercise has identified over 4,800
individual pieces of REUL in
total, which are now present in the dashboard. This is an
increase of approximately 1,080 pieces since the last iteration.
This dashboard provides multiple options to explore and filter
the legislation, which is concentrated over 400 unique policy
areas.
Future updates to the dashboard will take place throughout 2023.
These will include further previously ‘orphaned’ REUL which has been identified by The
National Archives. The first of these additional updates occurred
in September 2023, with 77 additional pieces added, all planned
for revocation via a statutory instrument to be laid on 4
September 2023. The dashboard now totals 4,994 entries.
This catalogue is provided by the UK government and is therefore
not intended to provide an authoritative account of REUL that sits with the competence of
the devolved governments. However, it may contain individual
pieces of REUL which do sit
in devolved areas and it does identify the territorial
application of each piece of REUL.
Creating and continuing to develop this comprehensive record of
EU-derived legislation will enable the government to accelerate
regulatory reform and reclaim the UK statute book. Going forward,
the government will continue to update this catalogue on a
quarterly basis as government departments work to identify where
more legislation can be amended, repealed or replaced. This
dashboard documents the government’s progress against that aim.
For further instructions on using the dashboard please visit the
Retained EU
Law dashboard.
