The United Kingdom wants to smooth the process of amending or repealing legacy European Union laws, such as regulations about GMOs or data privacy and hopes to save 1 billion pounds by bringing more flexibility.
British Prime Minister Boris Johnson wants to make it easier to remove or amend European Union legislation that was copied into the country’s law before it left the EU.
The prime minister will on January 31 propose the ‘Brexit Freedoms Bill’.
When the United Kingdom left the EU, thousands of laws from the Union were transferred for application in Britain to ease the Brexit process.
“Many EU laws kept on after Brexit were agreed as a messy compromise between 28 different EU member states and often did not reflect the UK’s own priorities or objectives”, according to a government statement.
At the moment, reforming or repealing a legacy EU law could take several years, the prime minister argues. As such, the bill is expected to end the “special status that EU law still enjoys in our legal framework”.
EU laws made before 1 January 2020 have precedence in the British framework, which goes against the U.K.’s own sovereignty for the government.
The Brexit Freedoms Bill aims at facilitating changes to ensure regulation “tailor-made to the UK’s own needs”.
For UK agriculture, it has been planning on being more flexible on gene editing and the production of genetically modified organisms, which is heavily restricted in the EU.
It also wants to cut red tape. The government claims it will save £1 billion (US$1.35 billion) with the simplification of business regulations.
For instance, it would like to modify the EU’s current data protection policy and create “a more proportionate and less burdensome data rights regime” than the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).
The United Kingdom officially left the European Union exactly two years ago, on January 31, 2020.
