Legal Options for Post-Brexit Climate Change and Energy Provisions in a Future UK-EU Trade Agreement
Dr Markus Gehring and Freedom-Kai Phillips, European Climate Fund (2019) 
Brexit reaches into almost every area of policy, especially the environment. More than half of the UK’s planned cuts in carbon pollution are bound up with membership of the EU. Despite this, we have seen too little focus on how the UK’s established leadership position on climate change and clean energy could be impacted by future trade deals.
A failure to understand and defend climate protections within post-Brexit trade agreements, including any UK-EU or UK-US trade deal, risks endangering the high environmental standards that Britain has become known for around the world.
Led by Dr Markus Gehring, leading trade law experts at the University of Cambridge have bridged this gap in knowledge. Their new paper examines the proposed UK exit arrangements and sets out how the Brexit agreement would need substantial changes to avoid damaging environmental rollbacks and instead set a new gold standard for climate change provisions in trade deals.
Results of the research were published in the report below and launched at a special event convened in London.
The report is available here: Post-Brexit_Provisions_report_final
The podcast of the London event is available below.
