Package and approval

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Package of agreements

The EU-UK Trade and Cooperation Agreement (TCA) was agreed on 24 December 2020 and published as part of a package of agreements and declarations on 26 December 2020. Following provisional application, the final agreements entered into force on 1 May 2021.

Together with the Withdrawal Agreement, which includes the Northern Ireland Protocol, the TCA is now the basis for the relationship between the UK and the EU.

The principal final EU-UK agreements are:

In addition, the package included several Joint Declarations on important issues for further cooperation, such as financial services regulatory cooperation, subsidies, asylum, road hauliers and the declaration of adequacy decisions.

The initial text was provisional and a ‘scrubbed’ version, the definitive text of the TCA was published in the Official Journal of the European Union on 30 April 2021.

The UK government published its summary of the December agreements here and of the Joint Declarations here.

The European Commission published a set of explanatory documents on 24 December:

Trade and Cooperation Agreement

The TCA has seven Parts:

Common and institutional provisions
Trade, transport, fisheries and other arrangements
Law enforcement and judicial cooperation in criminal matters
Thematic cooperation
Participation in Union programmes, sound financial management and financial provisions
Dispute settlement and horizontal provisiosn
Final provisions

There are also many annexes (see Appendix C for the detailed contents list).

The TCA covered most of the items listed in the Political Declaration, but the big omission was the chapter on Foreign Policy, Security and Defence. Civil protection and illegal migrations were also missing from Thematic Cooperation.

However, the TCA’s coverage is often thin. For example, it has no chapter on financial services and there are no mutual recognition agreements to avoid duplicate checks on traded goods.

For ‘Trade, transport, fisheries and other arrangements’, the main sections in Part 2 are:

Trade
1. Trade in goods
2. Services and investment
3. Digital trade
4. Capital movements
5. Intellectual property
6. Public procurement
7. Small and medium-sized enterprises
8. Energy
9. Transparency
10. Good regulatory practices and regulatory cooperation
11. Level playing field and fair competition and sustainability
12. Exceptions
Aviation
Road transport
Social security coordination and visas for short-term visits
Fisheries
Other provisions

Approval and scrutiny – EU

The TCA was treated as an EU-only agreement since it only covers areas under EU competence, either exclusively or shared with Member States (MS). The Commission chose Article 217 TFEU as the legal basis for the conclusion of the TCA. This required unanimous agreement in the Council and consent of the European Parliament.

The steps in approval were:

The Commission proposed to apply the Agreement on a provisional basis, for a limited period of time until 28 February 2021.
On 29 December, the Council of 27 Member States unanimously approved signature of the Agreement and its provisional application from 1 January 2021.
On 30 December in Brussels, the President of the European Council, Charles Michel, and President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, signed the TCA.
The European Parliament was going to approve by the end of February. However, on 10 February the Commission proposed an extension of the provisional application to 30 April, requiring the approval of the European Council and the TCA Partnership Council.
The Council adopted the decision on the conclusion of the Agreement
The European Parliament gave its approval on 28 April 2021.

Approval and scrutiny – UK

Government published the European Union (Future Relationship) Bill on 29 December. The purpose of the Bill is to implement in domestic law the provisions of the TCA, the Nuclear Cooperation Agreement and the Security of Classified Information Agreement.
MPs were asked to read the deal (published 26 December) and the Bill (available 29 December) in time to debate and vote on the Bill on 30 December.
The Bill passed the House of Commons with 521 votes to 73 on 30 December.
The Prime Minister, Boris Johnson, signed the agreements in London on 30 December 2020.
Late on 30 December, the House of Lords approved the Bill, which became law after receiving royal assent.

Neither the Commons nor the Lords were able to scrutinise this important legislation properly before approving it. This was because the government fast-tracked the implementation Bill through both houses. Similarly, the devolved nations had no time to give their legislative consent.

The government chose not to apply the legislation provisionally to allow time for scrutiny (unlike the EU). However, Parliament still needed to satisfy itself that the Bill’s provisions and delegated powers were appropriate. The Lords Select Committee on the Constitution recommended on 29 December that:

“the House considers how best to review the Trade and Cooperation Agreement, and conduct post-legislative scrutiny of the Bill to implement it, and to undertake such scrutiny at the earliest opportunity. The quality of such scrutiny will be an early and substantial test of a Parliament possessing a significant tranche of returned powers.”

The House of Commons Committee on the Future Relationship with the European Union, chaired by Hilary Benn, met on 29 December. The Committee published a useful high-level report on the contents of the deal. The Committee was dissolved on 16 January but reported on 21 January with recommendations for future parliamentary scrutiny of the TCA.