Ex ECJ judge criticises Government

The UK Government has failed to address questions about how individual legal disputes will be dealt with after Brexit, a former judge of the European Court of Justice (ECJ) has told MSPS.

Sir David Edward said UK ministers’ proposals are unclear on how the legal process would work for ordinary people.

The UK position paper on enforcement and dispute resolution, published last month, sets out options for enforcing withdrawal from the EU, new dispute resolution mechanisms and deals with the future role of the ECJ.

Sir David said: “The paper enforcement and dispute resolution appears to envisage that we are talking about disputes between the UK on the one hand and the EU on the other hand, but in fact EU law is not really about that at all, and certainly the jurisdiction of the ECJ is not about that at all.

“One has to bear in mind that more than 50% of the caseload of the Court of Justice is concerned with cases arising in the national courts of member states about the rights of individuals, and that is not going to go away in the event of Brexit.”

Questions of “extreme complication” around how such disputes will be dealt with “are simply not properly addressed at all in the UK position paper”, Sir David said.

“This is a much more complex situation than the British government seems to recognise” he added.