European Union (Future Relationship) Act 2020

Overview of the Act

Reproduced verbatim from the Explanatory Notes published with the Act on legislation.gov.uk (Crown Copyright, Open Government Licence v3.0). Explanatory Notes are prepared by the responsible government department and are not part of the Act.

The European Union (Future Relationship) Act implements the Trade and Cooperation Agreement (TCA), Agreement on Nuclear Cooperation and Agreement on Security Procedures for Exchanging and Protecting Classified Information (‘the Agreements’), as agreed between the United Kingdom and the European Union (EU).

It also enables the implementation of arrangements and agreements that are either foreseen in the Agreements, or which are agreed by the UK and EU to be ‘supplementary’ to the TCA where these do not engage Section 20 of the Constitutional Reform and Governance Act 2010; these are, together with the Agreements, the future relationship agreements. The Act is required to implement the Agreements for them to have domestic legal effect and to enable the UK Government to ratify the Agreements.

The Act provides for the application of the Agreements in domestic law where relevant. The Act also creates powers to make secondary legislation, where appropriate, to enable the Agreements to be implemented domestically or for domestic law to be interpreted in light of the Agreement. These measures provide for the implementation of the Agreements agreed between the UK and the EU.

The Act also makes a small number of additional provisions relating to the UK’s relationship with the EU.