Escaping the jurisdiction of the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) is not just one of the goals professed in the White Paper on exiting the EU – it most likely qualifies as one of the Prime Minister’s red lines for any so-called “Brexit Deal”, next to free movement. After all, Court of Justice found some flag ship policies devised under Theresa May as Home Secretary to be incompatible with EU law, lastly -on 21 December 2016 – the Data Retention Regulations, also dubbed “Snoopers’ Charta”. But just how realistic is it to achieve this aim?

In a new CETLS / TREUP occasional paper Professor Dagmar Schiek analyses the extent to which the EU’s association agreements, in particular with states within its neighbourhood, and the new generation of its global trade agreements inaugurated with the Canadian EU Trade Agreement (CETA) allow the UK to avoid the jurisdiction of the Court. She concludes that the chances of the UK to escape the ECJ’s jurisdiction are very slim if the future relationship allows access to the Internal Market.