THE BREXIT TECH TIMELINE

The key dates in the Brexit timetable for the tech industry

March 2017

The government (at the time of writing) planned to invoke Article 50 by the end of March, finally kickstarting a two-year process to extricate the UK from the EU.

May/June 2017

The government will include the Great Repeal Bill in the Queen’s Speech. Regarded as a “tidying-up exercise”, it will give parliament the power to absorb all or parts of EU legislation into UK law, and dump the parts it doesn’t wish to keep.

May 2018

The European General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) comes into force. This strengthens privacy safeguards, forcing companies to seek explicit consent (pre-ticked boxes on web forms aren’t good enough, for example) to process personal data. As the UK won’t have left the EU by this date, the legislation will be enacted.

March 2019

Britain’s exit from the EU will be complete. The UK will have the freedom to tailor its own privacy and data protection legislation, although it’s highly likely, according to the legal experts we spoke to, that UK law will mirror EU legislation at this point. The big question is what will happen with immigration: Brexit voters will be expecting controls to be imposed. The most likely scenario, according to the experts, is some kind of points-based system that now applies to EU citizens as well as the rest of the world. This will increase the bureaucracy for tech firms wishing to hire staff from overseas.