- A number of interesting issues in relation to retained EU law have been explored in employment case law over the past few months.
Before examining the first wave of Brexit-related case law in the employment field, it is worth a quick reminder of the overall framework in which our courts have been operating since the beginning of 2021.
At the risk of considerable over-simplification, the key aim of the European Union (Withdrawal) Act 2018 (EUWA 2018) was to leave the UK with a functioning domestic rule book once it had left the EU. To avoid Brexit creating gaping holes in the areas formerly occupied by EU-derived law, the decision was taken to incorporate the whole body of EU legislation and case law that applied at the point of exit and into domestic law. In order to make this snapshot approach work, it was also necessary to cut the legal ‘conduit pipe’ in the form of the European Communities Act 1972 (ECA 1972), which had