Christopher Hutton & Aniko Adam examine the implications of Brexit for UK competition law
- Will European competition law, policy and practice drift in a different direction without the UK’s significant influence?
It has been almost five months since the vote for Brexit. Although Brexit will likely have a significant impact on the UK competition landscape, it is not yet clear what that landscape will look like. It is also not clear whether there will be any transitional arrangements, or how those arrangements might work.
As there continues to be more questions than answers, this article aims to highlight some of the most important areas for potential change, assuming a “hard” Brexit situation where the UK does not have membership of the European Economic Area (EEA) or an equivalent relationship with the European Union (EU). This seems to be a reasonable expectation given recent indications from the UK government.
In particular, this article focuses on one key feature of Brexit for UK competition law. Brexit will bring to an end regimes whereby, both in the context of merger control and antitrust enforcement,
