Brexit, the endgame. The Retained EU Law (Revocation and Reform) Bill 2022.

On 22 Sept 2022 the UK Government introduced The Retained EU Law (Revocation and Reform) Bill 2022 which provides for two sunset dates for existing retained EU law. On 31st December 2023, all retained EU law will expire, unless otherwise preserved. Any retained EU law that remains in force after this date will be assimilated in the domestic statute book, by the removal of the special EU law features previously attached to it. The Bill provides a second sunset date by including an extension mechanism for delaying the expiry of specified pieces of retained EU law until 2026. The Bill will also reinstate domestic law as the highest form of law on the UK statute book. In case of conflict with retained EU law domestic law will prevail.

There is very little by way of retained EU law that is relevant to the maritime practitioner. The Brussels Regulation and Lugano Convention both ceased to have effect as at the end of the implementation period. The Port Services Regulation survived but is currently on death row and is the subject of a government consultation as to its repeal.

What does remain, however, are the two conflicts of law regulations, Rome I for contracts and Rome II for tort/delict, both now suitably domesticated as UK law, and also the Rome Convention 1980 which was brought into UK law by the Contracts Applicable Law Act 1990, now amended so that it will continue to apply to existing contracts entered into between 1 April 1991 (the date on which the Rome Convention came into force) and 16 December 2009 (after which Rome 1 replaced the Convention in the relevant EU Member States). 

It is likely that these three pieces of retained law will either be specifically retained, or their expiry delayed until the end of 2026, but who knows? Should they disappear into the sunset, conflicts of law will return to the common law rules for contracts made after the sunset date and the rules in Part III of the Private International Law (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act 1995 for torts committed after the sunset date.

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Professor Simon Baughen

Professor Simon Baughen was appointed as Professor of Shipping Law in September 2013 (previously Reader at the University of Bristol Law School). Simon Baughen studied law at Oxford and practised in maritime law for several years before joining academia. His research interests lie mainly in the field of shipping law, but also include the law of trusts and the environmental law implications of the activities of multinational corporations in the developing world. Simon's book on Shipping Law, has run to seven editions (soon to be eight) and is already well-known to academics and students alike as by far the most learned and approachable work on the subject. Furthermore, he is now the author of the very well-established practitioner's work Summerskill on Laytime. He has an extensive list of publications to his name, including International Trade and the Protection of the Environment, and Human Rights and Corporate Wrongs - Closing the Governance Gap. He has also written and taught extensively on commercial law, trusts and environmental law. Simon is a member of the Institute of International Shipping and Trade Law, a University Research Centre within the School of Law, and he currently teaches at Swansea on the LLM in:Carriage of Goods by Sea, Land and Air; Charterparties Law and Practice; International Corporate Governance.

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