Following the UK’s referendum on its membership of the EU on 23 June 2016, we are focusing on Brexit in this month’s edition of the Brussels Agenda.
Since last month’s edition, where we included a special section on the issue, there have been further developments on Brexit: the EU institutions have chosen their key players in the negotiations; the UK government is, behind closed doors, developing its strategy towards the negotiations; and, as such, the Law Societies are also taking their positions on the issue.We have viewpoint contributions from Robert Bourns, President of the Law Society of England and Wales, and Eilidh Wiseman, President of the Law Society of Scotland on the issue of Brexit. Furthermore, we have a piece from Ignasi Guardans, a Spanish lawyer and former politician, providing a European perspective on Brexit.
With a withdrawal agreement not expected to be reached for some time however, there are still plenty of other developments within the EU institutions to keep us busy, which we have included, such as new copyright proposals from the European Commission, an own initiative report on mutual recognition of certificates of adoption and the Advocate General’s opinion on the EU-Canada agreement on the transfer of Passenger Name Record data.
We also welcome our new trainee solicitors, David Harry, Madeleine Lamond and Frances Shipsey, to the office. David is training at Lucas Law Solicitors in Wales, specialising in family law, real estate and private client law. Madeleine works at Laura Devine Solicitors, a specialist immigration firm in London, and is working on the criminal justice, consumer law and regulation of legal services portfolios. Frances is a trainee at Burges Salmon LLP in Bristol and is focusing on commercial areas, in particular tax, intellectual property and competition law.