Brexit and business | EU 'be prepared' notices

Over the past couple of months, the European Commission and certain EU regulatory agencies have published a number of ‘be prepared’ notices, which have more recently attracted attention in the press.

These notices are aimed principally at ‘private entities’, which really means businesses.

Common themes to these notices

The contents are not uniform, as they are addressed to different sectors and industries, but there are some common themes:

• They make the obvious point that from 30 March 2019 (expected timetable!), the UK will be a ‘third country’ in EU terms.
• And that therefore EU law, rules and regulations will not apply in the UK.  (Though of course…it isn’t quite that simple, as the UK is incorporating existing EU law into UK domestic law as at the date of Brexit.  But from an EU perspective, one can absolutely see their point; it won’t be ‘EU law’).
• Certificates of professional competence, attestations, operating licences, certifications and similar authorisations issued by UK bodies will no longer be valid in the EU.
• An undertaking may need a permanent establishment or principal place of business in the EU after Brexit, where before 29 March 2019 this has been in the UK.
• Similarly, marketing authorisation holders may need to be in the EU.
• And some activities, such as testing, may have to be performed in the EU.
• Where Single Market rules have facilitated movement of, for example, data, between the UK and EU27, other solutions will be need to be adopted.  (Plainly this is an issue that goes across Single Market activities.)

But but but

As the UK government has fairly pointed out, these notices in almost every case make no mention of the transition period that is expected to follow Brexit and probably last until the end of 2020.  The expectation is that during that period, the UK will continue to participate in the Single Market on similar terms to those at present.  Nor do the notices mention that issues raised within them may be addressed in the final UK-EU27 ‘deal’, whenever that is reached.

So one can look at these notices as being part of the EU27’s negotiation tactics, putting pressure on the UK by implying to businesses that they should be actioning contingency plans now, or as a neutral information exercise, alerting business to the worst-case consequences of a ‘no deal’ Brexit. Or both.

The notices

Links to the relevant notices are below. In most cases, you need to scroll down the page and click through to the relevant PDFs:

Animal welfare

Chemicals (see ‘Advice to companies section’)

Civil justice and private international law

Company law

Data protection

Intellectual property (particularly EU trademarks and registered Community designs)

Medicinal products for human and animal use / pharma

Mineral water

Transport (sea, air, rail)