THE DEAL

It might be rumoured that the government will reintroduce a new version of the Withdrawal Agreement in order to get a deal with the EU.

What is imperative is that not just the “backstop” issue needs to be deleted but also Article 4 (which ties the UK into Union Law under the jurisdiction of the ECJ). Also all other references to compliance with Union Law should be deleted

The WA was not written overnight and the 585 pages were composed by the EU Commission, including being crawled over by EU Legal Services, and must have taken many months to formulate.

The WA has footnotes which reference EU Directives which will need to be applied in the UK in order to comply with the terms of the Agreement.

Unless all reference to compliance with Union Law is deleted the sovereignty of the UK under ECJ rulings will apply.

Sovereignty was a fundamental issue during the Referendum when the slogan to “ take back control” was a major theme of the campaign

My experience of over 30 years involvement in the EU taught me that any document proposed by the EU Commission has to be read in full as any dispute under Union Law following implementation will use interpretation to do just that.

When scrutinising EU proposals as a Member of the European Economic and Social Committee  – examining these from a UK position – the text needed scrutiny but also the interpretation (especially if the original proposal was written and legally drafted in a non English version)

I do wonder how many Members of Parliament and Ministers have actually read the full text of the Withdrawal Agreement