Environmental Law Could Face Pressure Post-Brexit (Centre for International Governance Innovation - Stephen Tromans QC)

Free trade deals could influence weakened environmental laws in the United Kingdom.

The standards of debate and discourse that preceded the United Kingdom's 2016 referendum on continued membership in the European Union were, by any measure, lamentable. The environment did not figure largely, but Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs Boris Johnson — a prominent voice in the Leave campaign — did in fact scornfully refer to the topic of EU environmental law in an article he wrote in The Telegraph. His comments were presumably made for comedic effect rather than legal accuracy: "The more the EU does, the less room there is for national decision-making. Sometimes these EU rules sound simply ludicrous, like the rule that you can't recycle a teabag, or that children under eight cannot blow up balloons, or the limits on the power of vacuum cleaners."

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