THE slogan may be “get Brexit done”, but the reality is that big questions remain unanswered over what will happen once the UK leaves the European Union on 31 January.
The official departure date starts the clock on an 11-month transition period during which the UK must follow most of the EU’s laws while negotiating a future trade deal. If there is no agreement by the end of the year, there could be big consequences for science, energy and more.
There is certainly a lot to get through, and little time. Noises from both sides suggest they are planning to leave four to six months for the remaining 27 EU member states to ratify the agreement. That means negotiations need to be completed as early as July for certain issues.
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CLIMATE CHANGE
The UK’s current commitment under the Paris climate agreement was jointly submitted with the EU. That means a new, UK-only plan for carbon cuts will need to be sent to the United Nations – something sources say could happen within weeks.
Brexit will make it harder for the EU to meet its 2030 carbon targets because the UK has performed better than many of its European peers on emissions cuts in recent years. Its exit will reduce average EU efforts.
Until the year’s end, the UK will remain part of the EU’s flagship climate policy, the Emissions Trading System (ETS), in which 11,000 power stations and industrial facilities trade carbon permits that aim to drive down emissions by incentivising greener options.
The most likely outcome is that the UK quits the ETS at the end of the year. It will then impose either a carbon tax or its own carbon market. In the longer term, a UK market may link up to the EU one.
The UK will be cut off from EU funds that have supported green energy projects, including the European Investment Bank. EU regional development funds have also , such as a geothermal scheme in Cornwall. Without UK funding to fill the gap – something the government has – low-carbon investment could suffer, says Shane Tomlinson at E3G, a UK-based environmental think tank.
FISHING
When politicians ahead of the 2016 EU referendum, pro-leave campaigners promised the UK’s fishing industry a brighter future. The reality is less straightforward, and will hinge on how the broader EU-UK trade negotiations play out.
“4-6
Number of months that may be set aside to ratify a new UK-EU deal”
A new fishing agreement is one of the first post-Brexit deadlines that will arrive this year, as the UK and EU have set a date of 1 July for a deal. Any agreement will take effect from next year, when the UK leaves the EU’s Common Fisheries Policy and becomes an “independent coastal state”. The deal will dictate what, where and how vessels from the UK and the 27 EU states can fish.
The EU will be seeking continued access to UK waters, which is no surprise given that Spain has the largest fishing fleet in Europe and France the third biggest – the UK is second. Observers think the most likely outcome in negotiations is that, although the UK will have “taken back control” of its waters, EU boats will still be allowed in, and vice versa. “I would imagine there would be some sort of reciprocal access,” says Ali Plummer at environmental charity the RSPB.
The UK will also be consulted at the annual bun fight in December at which fishing quotas dictating how much can be caught in 2021 will be divvied up among EU states. The UK government today introduced a fisheries bill which will end automatic access to UK waters for EU fishing vessels, with future entry subject to negotiations.
ENVIRONMENT
UK chancellor Sajid Javid recently said firms , which could have a big environmental effect.
For example, it could attract more firms that make fossil fuel-powered cars to the UK, while electric vehicles are built elsewhere. The European Commission also fears some of the exemptions the EU granted to the UK’s dirtiest power stations could be extended for longer by the UK if it chooses to diverge.
The UK government has . But although the UK is bringing forward an environment bill that will transpose EU legislation on issues such as water and air quality into UK law, it will not carry over many of the green principles in EU legislation, such as the precautionary principle and polluter pays principle.
“That’s a really massive change in the way we do things,” says Josh Emden at UK think tank the Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR). The concern is that the UK could move to a more risk-based approach to environmental protections that might be more susceptible to lobbying by industry, he says.
ENERGY
Whether the UK stays in the EU’s internal energy market will have implications for energy costs and the price of decarbonising electricity supplies. Membership makes it easier to trade electricity via the five UK-EU interconnectors: the giant undersea power cables that account for a tenth of UK electricity supplies and growing. It isn’t yet clear if membership will feature in a trade deal or cooperation talks.
The UK is also leaving the Euratom nuclear treaty, but . That means nuclear materials, such as fuel for power plants and isotopes for medical use, can still cross borders. It would also see the continued joint UK-EU funding of the £60 million-a-year JET fusion power project in Culham, Oxfordshire, UK, which is funded to the end of 2020. The UK currently pays around £7.5 million of this, with the EU making up the rest, but that may change.
If there is a failure to agree an association – seen as unlikely – UK firms and universities may also find themselves frozen out of winning contracts at ITER, the huge fusion power facility being built in south France.
FARMING
Subsidies paid to farmers will change. Those given under the EU’s scheme are largely tied to how much land farmers own, with a smaller pot of subsidies linked to environmental actions such as the stewardship of natural resources and combating climate change.
Post-Brexit, under the now progressing through Parliament, there will be no payments just for owning land. Instead, farmers will receive subsidies for the “public goods” they deliver, such as better water quality and helping the UK hit its net-zero emissions target. This change could be positive, says Emden, but it could also prove challenging. For instance, it would be hard to reward farmers for improving soil health because there is no reliable baseline to compare against, he says.
While environment secretary Theresa Villiers , Emden says farmers are nervous. Emily Lydgate at the University of Sussex, UK, says the new agriculture bill does nothing to address worries about food safety standards. She is concerned that any sign the UK is pivoting away from EU standards and towards US ones – such as over totemic issues like chlorine washing of chicken – could also expose rifts within the UK’s nations.
“The UK government has been at pains to rule out any backsliding on environmental legislation”
Lydgate cites the US desire to reform the UK’s approach to approving pesticides, something the UK government might accede to, but Scotland could oppose. More broadly, any shift towards US standards would probably lead to increased deregulation, says Tomlinson.
SCIENCE AND MEDICINE
Life sciences are among the many sectors exposed to the prospect of the UK no longer being aligned with EU regulations.
The IPPR says pharmaceutical firms need to get their drugs approved by European medical agencies in order to sell them in the EU, so any regulatory divergence could make exports from the UK harder. That, in turn, would make the UK look less attractive when drug-makers choose where to operate.
Like many areas of science, the life sciences rely on freedom of movement, which is due to end after the transition period. Nobel prizewinner Paul Nurse warned last year: “If we turn our back on the rest of the world, our world talent will turn its back on us.”
In response to such concerns, the government announced this week that, from 20 February, scientists, mathematicians and researchers will be able to apply for a fast-track visa scheme, with no limit on the number of people able to come to the UK.
