Europe

The rules for pet travel will change once the UK leaves the EU. In the case of a no deal Brexit there will be more stringent requirements for pet owners travelling to and from the EU.

In November 2017, 23 EU Member States submitted a Joint Notification to the EU Council of Ministers setting out their intention to utilise the Permanent Structured Cooperation (PESCO) mechanism to further European defence (CSDP). Ireland and Portugal subsequently joined in early December and a Decision formally launching PESCO was adopted on 11 December 2017. The first 17 capability projects were formally launched in March 2018, with a second tranche of 17 projects agreed in November 2018. The UK did not sign the Joint Notification and will, therefore, remain outside of PESCO. In doing so, the UK has no decision making rights over its governance, its projects, or a veto over its future strategic direction.

The European Intervention Initiative (EII/EI2) is a French-led initiative set out by President Macron in September 2017 as part of his vision for a “sovereign, united and democratic Europe”. In order to achieve that ambition he put forward proposals for a common European intervention force and a common doctrine for action, independent of the European Union. Ten European countries, including the UK, are involved in the initiative. Italy indicated its willingness to join in September 2019.

The EU has over a thousand international agreements with non-EU countries, covering trade, aviation, nuclear co-operation and other issues. These will cease to apply to the UK when it leaves the EU. The Government has identified 157 agreements with non-EU countries that it is seeking in order to replace these arrangements in the event of a no deal Brexit. Some agreements have already been concluded, but engagement is ongoing for most of these and some will not be in place by the scheduled Brexit day of 31 October.

On 2 August 2019 the United States formally withdrew from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty. In place for over 30 years, it was considered a cornerstone of the international arms control architecture as it was the first treaty to eliminate an entire category of weapons from the nuclear arsenals of the US and Russia and ended a nuclear stand-off in Europe. What are the implications of its demise for European security and the arms control agenda more broadly?

In light of Brexit, an increasingly assertive Russia and the unpredictable attitude of the current US administration toward European security, there is, at present. a political appetite for progress in the development of the EU's Common Security and Defence Policy. Much has been achieved in the last few years and without the UK, which has historically opposed deeper defence integration, Brexit undoubtedly offers opportunities. The question is: how far will the EU at 27 be willing to go? This is an update to earlier versions of this paper published in May 2018 and May 2019.

Commons Briefing Paper 8397, What if there's no Brexit deal? considered among other things how the UK and the EU arrived at a situation in which a no-deal Brexit might happen. This paper considers the position since Boris Johnson became Prime Minister in July.

We don't know what the future relationship between the UK and the EU will be. It has been suggested that an Association Agreement might be appropriate because it is a fairly flexible kind of agreement and can include a Deep and Comprehensive Free Trade Area. But an Association Agreement also requires a degree of legislative approximation of the third country with the laws of the EU, and it isn't clear whether the UK Government would find this acceptable. This paper looks at the scope and contents of some existing Association Agreements.

The EU and the other 27 Member States have been preparing for a possible no-deal, or 'disorderly', Brexit. The European Commission has had a no-deal preparedness plan which is now complete, and the EU27 have also been implementing their own preparations which will take effect if the UK leaves the EU without a withdrawal agreement at the end of October 2019. This paper looks at the EU preparedness programme and at some of the EU27 measures, particularly in the area of citizens' rights.

The UK is party to hundreds of international treaties with third states or organisations, many of them on trade, by virtue of its EU membership. To continue to benefit from the advantages of these agreements, the Government has been seeking to replace them in a UK bilateral context. The Government has prioritised trade agreements, but has also agreed replacement agreements covering aviation services and safety, and road transport, for example. But Parliament is not happy about the way the Government is carrying out this 'treaty continuity programme' and Committees in both Houses have called for a greater scrutiny role for Parliament in treaty-making processes. This paper looks at what has been going on and what Parliamentary Committees in both Houses have asked for. It includes a table showing where we are with scrutiny of these treaties and what sort of scrutiny they have undergone, both in their precursor form as EU treaties and currently as replacement treaties.

This paper compiles responses to a variety of frequently asked questions by MPs on behalf of their constituents who own property in another Member State but do not live there full-time, and wish to know what will change for them after Brexit.

This briefing looks in detail at the Withdrawal Agreement negotiated between the EU and UK and finalised on 14 November 2018. It was endorsed by EU Member State leaders at a special European Council summit on 25 November and the UK Prime Minister promoted it in the UK Parliament and around the country. The Agreement was debated at length in Parliament on several occasions and has been voted on three times. But the House of Commons has not endorsed it. A second extension of Article 50 took exit day to 31 October 2019, but once again the UK is faced with the possibility of leaving the EU without an agreement if this agreement or another one is not ratified by the UK and the EU.

A Westminster Hall debate on the ‘Polish contribution to the UK war effort in World War Two’ has been scheduled for Tuesday 2 July 2019 from 2.30pm to 4.00pm. The debate has been initiated by Daniel Kawczynski MP