European stocks pushed higher on Monday, with Germany's main stock index striking a record high, buoyed by a pandemic recovery package agreed in the US and Britain's Brexit deal with the EU.

Having been closed since December 23, the blue-chip DAX index bounced 1.7%, reaching 13 819 points at the open, topping the previous high set in February before the coronavirus pandemic forced Europe into lockdown.

The index later pared some of its gains, but still showed a gain of 1.5% in afternoon trading. In Paris, the CAC 40 was up 1.1%.

The stock market in London was closed for a holiday.

The jump came after US President Donald Trump signed a $900 billion (735 billion) stimulus bill late Sunday, averting a government shutdown and removing considerable uncertainty for the world's largest economy.

The US leader had previously refused to sign the relief package, arguing that it included wasteful spending.

On December 24, Britain and the European Union agreed a post-Brexit deal that ended the potentially destructive possibility of its disorderly exit from the bloc.

The Brexit deal and the US aid package were pushing the DAX to "a new high", said Jochen Stanzl, an analyst at CMC Markets.

The market is "breathing a sigh of relief" after the Brexit deal, independent analyst Timo Emden added.

Several EU nations including France, Germany, Italy and Spain began rolling out their first Covid-19 vaccinations on Sunday, although the supply is limited.

"For the markets, it remains crucial to get Covid-19 under control as soon as possible," Emden said.

The DAX's previous high was 13 795 points in February, but it plunged to 8 255 points in March as the pandemic shutdowns battered Europe's economy.

Markets recovered as restrictions on the economy were lifted in the summer and after central banks pumped billions in monetary stimulus into the economy, including 1.85 trillion by the European Central Bank.

US shutdown avoided

The emergency US package is part of a larger spending bill that, with Trump's signature, will avoid a government shutdown on Tuesday.

The president's turnaround came after a day marked by calls from across the political spectrum for action to avert a financial and social disaster in the world's largest economy, especially among the most vulnerable.

"For Americans that have been endlessly checking their mailboxes for a stimulus check, this is the best holiday present anyone could ask for," said Axi strategist Stephen Innes.

"The stimulus balloon will allow the markets to navigate better the number of new air pockets... due to the virus's latest variant," he added.

Markets have recently been shaken by the news of the emergence of a new variant of the coronavirus that authorities believe may spread more easily.

Asian markets traded mixed on Monday. Tokyo closed 0.7% higher on Monday, with Jakarta, Mumbai and Bangkok also in positive territory.

Shanghai, Seoul and Singapore were flat, while Hong Kong closed down 0.3% and Manila slid 1.1%.

Sydney and Wellington were closed for a holiday.

Oil prices rose as the US stimulus measures should help boost demand for energy.

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CHERBOURG, France/DUBLIN (Reuters) - From his office overlooking Cherbourg docks, general manager Yannick Millet points to trailers destined for Ireland that belong to Amazon and FedEx, new customers and a signal of a potential big shift in post-Brexit trade.

Confronted by red tape and delays after Britains messy exit from the European Union, Irish traders are shipping goods directly to and from European ports, shunning the once-speedier route through Britain.

You see the shift in supply chains right here, he said.

All five operators connecting Ireland to mainland Europe have increased ferry services in the past nine months, with some bringing forward planned sailings and others moving larger ships away from quieter British routes to meet new demand.

Millet forecast Cherbourg would handle 9,000 trucks in January, equivalent to almost a quarter of what passed through the French port annually before the COVID-19 crisis.

For decades, the land bridge offered Irish traders the swiftest, most reliable route to continental Europe. It involves a short sea crossing between Dublin and Holyhead in Wales and then a hop between Dover and Calais. Every year 150,000 lorries would use the route.

But post-Brexit paperwork and delays in customs clearance are snarling up the process, adding hours or days to journeys and ratcheting up costs. Many companies are switching routes.

This is a game-changer, said Chris Smyth, commercial director at Irelands Perennial Freight. Demand was huge for freight space to ship to Cherbourg, Dunkirk, Rotterdam and Zeebrugge, he added.

Cherbourgs business before Brexit had been evenly split between Ireland and Britain. Now, the port would orient itself towards Ireland, Millet said.

I thought traffic would double but it has tripled, he said. The question now is whether the traffic volumes we see today will hold in the months to come.

Stena Line, the largest Irish Sea operator, has doubled its services on the booming Rosslare-Cherbourg route, temporarily cancelling some sailings to Britain after freight volumes fell 60% in the first half of January.

Irish Ferries has deployed a larger vessel out of Dublin and planned to add more weekly rotations next month, the Port of Cherbourg said. Brittany Ferries also brought forward a planned sailing linking France and Ireland.

Danish operator DFDS said the freight ferries plying its new 23-hour crossing from Rosslare to Dunkirk six days a week were pretty much full. Route director Aidan Coffey said capturing 30% of land bridge traffic would make the route viable and DFDS might soon add up to two more sailings per week.

Were blown away by the demand, Coffey said.

No one knows if the shift is permanent.

The Irish Maritime Development Office, a government shipping promotion body, said a return to pre-Brexit logistic chains would depend on the speed of customs formalities along the land bridge and that ferries linking Ireland and mainland Europe could not replicate its volumes.

Eddie Burke, a senior official at Irelands transport department, said the route through Britain would undoubtedly come back into play again.

Ferry operators were taking decisions on capacity week by week, said Ole Bockmann, Stenas operations chief in Cherbourg. Reverting to land bridge routes was simple, he said. We just take the ships off and go back to the old system.

It gives ports like Cherbourg and Irelands Rosslare a narrow window to persuade traders that the longer sea crossing between Ireland and mainland Europe is commercially viable for just-in-time logistics.

Eighteen months ago, Rosslare on the southeastern tip of Ireland was struggling. Its traffic volumes were stagnant while rivals were enjoying a 10-year run of growth.

Now its general manager, Glenn Carr, is fending off complaints about the number trucks passing through after freight traffic increased 500% in the first half of January.

Carr said the old perception that direct crossings from Ireland were too long for fresh food and just-in-time supply chains was changing. Many of the companies that had switched from the land bridge would remain, he forecast.

I was talking to some multinationals only this week and the question they asked me was, Glenn, are you putting on more services?

An 18-hour ferry ride away, Cherbourg ports Millet said his immediate priority was responding to shipping companies demands for better restaurants and washrooms for truckers and ironing out quayside glitches in the loading of extra vessels.

Brexit has for us been an opportunity to rethink our port, he said.

Reporting by Richard Lough in Cherbourg and Padraic Halpin in Dublin; Writing by Richard Lough; Editing by Giles Elgood

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After Brexit, Ireland and France cut out the middleman - Britain - Reuters

Among the various grievances that led to Britains departure from the European Union, resentment of worker protections was not dominant for most voters. But it was a point of urgency among many Conservative MPs, for whom freedom to deregulate was the purpose of Brexit.

That is what they meant by regaining sovereignty: emancipation from rules that, in Eurosceptic demonology, suffocate enterprise and limit prosperity. In that ideological conception, a successful Brexit is one that casts off the bureaucratic shackles as soon as possible.

But Boris Johnson has reasons to hesitate. His parliamentary majority is dependent on former Labour voters who do not embrace classical Tory faith in the free market free-for-all. On the contrary, many of those red wall voters are driven by insecurity that pushes in the opposite direction against the sink-or-swim ethos of globalised capitalism. They want protection.

There is a contradiction between the demands of Mr Johnsons new electoral base and his partys most cherished beliefs. That tension has emerged this week in government contortions around a review being conducted by the business department into labour laws. Kwasi Kwarteng, the business secretary, denies that the review will lead to lower standards, insisting that the governments ambition is enhancement of rights. The policy focus of the review is reported to be the regulation of hours (the working time directive much despised by Eurosceptics), holidays and rest breaks. As a committed Thatcherite from the enterprise group of MPs, Mr Kwartengs instinct towards those rules is unlikely to be to tighten. Mr Kwarteng has played down the departure from the EU working time model on the grounds that many member states exercise their right to opt out.

In so doing, he unwittingly underlined one of the futilities of Brexit. EU membership did not prevent the UK from having the continents most liberal labour market. The idea that new vistas of prosperity open up with yet more aggressive deregulation is a symptom of ideological monomania. It will do nothing to boost productivity, upgrade skills or cultivate long-term investment in the workforce and innovation, which most experts see as the central challenges for Britains economy.

Post-Brexit, a familiar path beckons for Britain, wooing foreign capital with tax breaks and cheap labour, but that is not a model to deliver any of what was promised to Mr Johnsons newly recruited voters. Too drastic a movement away from EU standards would also provoke retaliation from Brussels under level playing field provisions in the Brexit deal. But with access to European markets already curtailed by the deal, the reflex to chase a competitive advantage at the expense of standards will be hard for many Conservatives to resist.

The real tangle of red tape is now at the EU border, where Brexit imposes cumbersome new procedures. The cost is already being paid, as fish and other animal products rot before they can be cleared for continental markets. The drag on growth is inevitable. There were warnings, but leavers dismissed them as scaremongering. Ministers now hardly dare admit that such problems exist. The tragedy and the absurdity of the situation is that Mr Johnson will feel compelled to indulge the rhetoric of releasing business from a burden of imagined bureaucracy to avoid taking responsibility for the real burden, imposed by him. The prime minister will indulge policies based on ideological fiction, because he turned his back on economic facts several years ago.

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The Guardian view on Brexit and bureaucracy: the cost of absurdity - The Guardian

For nearly a century the firm of Teal & Mackrill in the port city of Hull in northeast England has made paints for special applications, like fishing trawlers and factory floors. It produces marine paint, for example, with ingredients to prevent barnacles from encrusting hulls.

Now in a little-noticed consequence of the new Brexit trade deal, the company is facing real concerns about its future. Geoff Mackrill, the third member of his family to helm the company, said that growing British regulatory burdens on chemicals may mean that eventually he wont be able to obtain some of the additives that make his paints distinctive.

The worry is that some of those materials that we use, he said, may become unavailable because of those costs.

It is a concern that is spread across Britains 33 billion (or about $45 billion) a year chemical industry.

Prime Minister Boris Johnson, when he announced the trade deal on Dec. 24, said Britain would now be free to set our own standards, to innovate in the way that we want. Business people like Mr. Mackrill were relieved that Britain had avoided a chaotic exit and that goods made in Britain could continue to cross over to Europe free of tariffs.

But some companies, notably in the chemical industry, are finding that business has become more complex rather than easier. The European Unions elaborate and burdensome regulations may no longer apply inside Britain, but they remain a fact of life for British firms like Mr. Mackrills that wish to continue selling their goods in Europe.

Adding to the burden, the British government is creating its own demanding set of chemical regulations, a mirror of the E.U. laws. An industry group said the cost to chemical businesses of recreating the European regulations, which requires extensive documentation, could reach as much as 1 billion, potentially a major burden on small firms and those with thin earnings margins.

The regulatory changes, plus the fact that chemicals can have long supply chains, have led some businesses to rethink their activities in Britain.

Before Brexit, Aston Chemicals, a firm based in Aylesbury, about 50 miles northwest of London, imported chemicals from around the globe, performed the necessary paperwork, paid any import duty, and then dispatched them by the truckload to European makers of moisturizers or dandruff shampoos.

Using Britain as a hub worked incredibly well, said Dani Loughran, the companys managing director. But after Brexit, it doesnt.

Trucks in Britain bound for Europe now face lengthy customs procedures at the border. And while British-made goods can still enter the European Union duty free, thats not the case for goods that originated elsewhere.

So, an importer like Aston Chemicals needs to pay tariffs on products made in the United States or Asia, and then again when it distributes them to the European Union, effectively doubling the rates, Ms. Loughran said.

Consequently, the company will now instead supply Europe from a base in Poland, a member of the European Union. It has cut its British warehouse staff from three to one.

These new obstacles arent just a drag for the chemical industry.

I think everyone who has been using the U.K. as a distribution center for Europe is going to be affected in the same way, Ms. Loughran said. They are going to find it very difficult from now on.

The shift will leave Ms. Loughrans British arm mainly catering to the local market but even that prospect has a regulatory cloud hanging over it.

She is accustomed to working with the European Unions chemical regulation system known as REACH, which has a reputation for strictness. Companies are required to submit lengthy files on each chemical substance that they supply inside the European Union, detailing its properties and uses as well as the potential risks and hazards, to the European Chemical Agency, based in Helsinki. Ms. Loughran said REACH was a headache, which we dreaded and cursed, but at least it covered the whole trading bloc including Britain.

But the chemical industry had hoped that, after Brexit, Britain and the European Union would continue sharing data filed under REACH, but that language did not make it into Decembers deal.

Companies now face the prospect of making voluminous and largely duplicate filings on the chemicals they want to sell in Britain with a newly created British agency, UK REACH. The fees charged and the work required in reconstructing data on product safety and other matters, which is expected to take several years, could eventually add up to 1 billion, according to estimates from the Chemical Industries Association, a British trade body.

A company cant simply cut and paste statements and files that have been previously lodged with the European regulator because, in many cases, the filings are full of commercially sensitive intellectual property belonging to other firms.

Stephen Elliott, the industry groups chief executive, said chemical firms operating in Britain could be forced to replicate almost word for word the submissions they have already made to the European regulator.

That is a pointless use of resource, he said.

Mr. Elliott said that the industry continued to lobby the government to agree to accept the filings it has already made under REACH, but said that at this point such an outcome looked like a tall order because of the governments aversion to relying on European regulation.

Executives say it makes little sense for chemical companies to incur similar regulatory costs to those of the European Union to sell products in Britain, whose economy is around one-seventh the size of that of the European Union. Industry executives also doubt that the British chemical agency will have sufficient staff and resources to measure up to its European counterpart, which employs around 600 people.

The combination of Brexit and UK REACH regulations isnt very helpful when companies are considering where to site new investment, said Paul Hodges, chairman of New Normal Consulting, a firm that focuses on chemicals. In other words, new investment may go elsewhere.

A souring of the chemical industry on Britain would be a blow to the post-Brexit economy. Chemicals may not be as visible as some other industries, but these substances are integral to a wide range of products, including cars and shampoo. It is a major business in Britain that accounts for a hefty 9 percent of exports, with almost 60 percent going to the European Union, and employs about 94,000 people, according to government statistics.

One worry is that firms will decide that supplying some chemicals that earn low profit margins or sell in small quantities, like the ingredients Mr. Mackrill buys for his paints, is no longer worthwhile. So far the leaders of the industry are taking a wait-and-see approach, though they look askance at new red tape and costs in Britain.

BASF, the German chemical giant, which sells around 1,200 substances in Britain, estimates that UK REACH could cost the company 70 million.

If the costs of bringing products to the U.K. market rise to make them uneconomic, we are not going to do it and make a loss, said Geoff Mackey, director of communications and sustainability at BASF in Britain.

Smaller British companies, though, are more likely to feel the impact. If they want to continue to be serious players, they need to sell to Europe and stay in line with European regulation, they say.

Mr. Mackrill has already felt obligated to set up a company in the Netherlands to comply with the rules of the European Union, where he sends around 10 percent of his products. He also has up to two people working full time on the regulatory implications of Brexit, a drain on the resources of a firm with 70 employees.

Mr. Mackrill, who is now executive chairman of his company, seems confident that a company that has been around since the early 20th century can navigate the Brexit shoals, but he says others may judge that the easiest course is to move their operations to the giant market next door.

Some of the manufacturers will probably look at it and go, Why dont we manufacture that in Europe?, Mr. Mackrill said. Thats not good for U.K. PLC, he said, meaning British business.

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For Britain's Chemical Industry, Brexits Red Tape Is Just Beginning - The New York Times

The government must quadruple the number of customs agents in the UK to ensure businesses struggling with mountains of Brexit red tape do not buckle under the strain, Labour has said in a letter to Michael Gove.

The shadow chancellor for the duchy of Lancaster, Rachel Reeves, put it to Gove that industry figures showing that only 12,000 customs agents have been trained fell far short of the 50,000 the government accepted last February would be necessary to cope with Brexit.

Can you please inform me what the government is doing to address this shortfall as swiftly as possible, so that businesses dont have to deal with even more disruption? she wrote.

Reeves letter comes as hauliers, freight forwarders and existing customs agents say businesses are struggling with the new trading regime.

Customs agents are the private operators who are contracted to do the paperwork for businesses and are separate to the army of officials recruited by HMRC to check the documents are in order.

Last February, Gove told the Commons he would stand by his pledge to recruit the estimated 50,000 agents needed within six months.

But in December, Bloomberg reported () that the 84m fund to train the agents was running dry despite the need for them at the end of the Brexit transition period.

What steps are the government taking to address this, and how will it support businesses as they grapple with huge amounts of new red tape and disruption? Reeves wrote.

It is in the interests of us all for British business to thrive under the new UK-EU trading relationship. As hauliers and the industries they support buckle under unprecedented red tape through no fault of their own, they need a plan of practical support from the government urgently.

In the past, the government has estimated 147,000 businesses who trade internationally have no prior experience of customs because they have only sold goods to EU states.

Several businesses told the Guardian they have had to wait days for a response from HMRC to customs queries. Others have told how businesses went into Brexit with little clue as to how complicated the new customs declarations, regulatory and transit certification and VAT rules would be.

Colin Jeffries, a freight forwarder, said it was absolute carnage, with customers not knowing what they needed to do to trade and EU hauliers rejecting UK deliveries because of new requirements for financial guarantees for lorry-loads of goods.

A Conservative party source said: Rachel Reeves is being misleading, because as she knows the government made no such promise. Labour under Sir Keir Starmer spent the last four years seeking to overturn the 2016 referendum result, and trying to block Brexit, opposing our plans to take back control of our borders and arguing we were spending too much money on preparations.

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Labour calls for more customs agents to cope with Brexit red tape - The Guardian

The European Union (EU) and the United Kingdom (UK) finally came to an agreement on 24 December 2020 (EU-UK Trade and Cooperation Agreement, the Agreement), less than ten days after the European Data Protection Board (EDPB) published astatementon the consequences a no-deal situation would have on the flows of personal data between the EU and the UK (for previous coverage of General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and Brexit, please see our alerthere). This statement has since beenupdatedon 13 January 2021.

According to this Agreement, until 30 June 2021, any transfer of personal data to the UK will be made under the current framework and will not be considered as a transfer of data to a third-party country. Nevertheless, at the end of this six-month grace period, and unless a compromise is found through an adequacy decision, the UK will become a third-party country in the eyes of theGeneral Data Protection Regulation no.2016/679. Consequently, all personal data from the EU to the UK will be considered a transfer of personal data outside of the EU, to a country not offering an adequate level of data protection from an EU point of view, despite the regulatory framework of the UK remaining the same as it was.

All UK-based companies which would be exchanging data with EU-based companies will need to thoroughly identify such transfers to ensure compliance, as well as on which basis they can be maintained from 30 June 2021 onward.

While the EDPB is currently evaluating whether the UKs regulatory framework could be considered as adequate (as per the minute of its43rd plenary session), suchadequacy decisionwhich would allow the free transfer of data between the two blocks is unlikely to be adopted before the Spring of 2021 at the earliest.

In the event where no adequacy decision is taken, the UKs supervisory authority (ICO) recommends all UK-based companies receiving data from the European Economic Area (EEA) to put alternative safeguards in place before the end of April. The possible alternative mechanisms would include:

Standard Contractual Clauses (SCC), which would remain the most flexible and less time-consuming solution.

However, the recent decision from the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) in theFacebook Ireland Ltd. v. Maximillian Schrems case, dated 16 July 2020 (Schrems II, see our alerthere) has called for an update to these clauses, and neither the EDPBs recommendations for additional organizational, contractual, and technical measures (here) nor the EU Commissions updated draft SCC will be finalized before 2021.

Companies wishing to rely on the SCC will therefore need to adopt a flexible and risk-based approach and supplement the now-current SCC with the expected requirements to be finalized.

Binding Corporate Rules (BCR), which are internal rules that facilitate cross-border data transfers within a multinational group of companies and international organizations.

This solution generally requires substantial investment in time and resources for its implementation and only addresses data transfers within an organization, excluding relationships with service providers, for example. They are, however, strongly advised for multi-national companies to streamline the data exchange relating to their internal organization.

Codes of Conduct, which may be adopted by professional and trade organizations to self-regulate an ecosystem (see our alerthere).

Just as for BCR, this mechanism would require time and resources. However, this sectoral approach is likely to become more prevalent in the coming years.

Specific exceptions provided for underArticle 49 GDPR, which would only be relevant for certain situations and not the day-to-day management, as they require the transfer to be:

Not repetitive;

Relating to a limited number of data subjects'

Necessary for the purposes of compelling legitimate interests pursued by the exporting company, not overridden by the interests or rights and freedoms of the data subject;

Documented by the exporting organization, with an assessment of all the circumstances surrounding the data transfer and has on the basis of that assessment provided suitable safeguards with regard to the protection of personal data;

Notified to the relevant supervisory authority; and

Notified in detail, including the above mentioned legitimate interest, to the data subjects.

Another solution which should be considered would be the joint-controller relationship that would bind the EU-based exporting entity and the UK-based importing entity. Indeed, in such a situation, GDPR should be deemed to apply directly to all the stakeholders involved and the data flows between these entities may not be construed as a data transfer per se. While not requiring a specific transfer mechanism, this relationship will need to be governed by a dedicated joint controllership agreement, and the parties thereto will be jointly and severally liable.

Meanwhile, and as of the time of this writing, the UK Government has stated that they would recognize the EU as an importing destination offering an adequate level of protection. Therefore, companies who data is only being transferred from the UK to the EU would have no additional requirements.

The One-Stop-Shop mechanism (OSS), which establishes one EU supervisory authority as competent for administering situations involving the processing of personal data over several EU Member States, has not been included in the Agreement. As a consequence, as of 1 January 2021, UK entities not otherwise subject to GDPR will no longer benefit from this mechanism. This will notably impact the management of personal data breach notification (see our analysis of the impact on personal data breachhere).

Both the EDPB and its UK counterpart, the ICO, have stated they would be working in close cooperation to ensure a transition as seamless as possible to all affected stakeholders, including for cases which are currently being investigated.

UK companies must now consider whether another supervisory authority may have jurisdiction over their data processing operations in the EU. Such jurisdiction may result from:

Their establishment within the EU, e.g. through a branch, subsidiary, or any other stable arrangement, as perArticle 3.1 GDPR.

To be considered an establishment under GDPR, however, the EU-based corporate offshoots from a UK company would need to be directly involved in the data processing operations at stakes, or inextricably linked to the activities of the UK company. A case-by-case review will therefore be required.

Where no such establishment exists, their activities, i.e. (i) the offering of products and services to EU data subjects per (ii) the monitoring of their behavior taking place in the EU, as perArticle 3.2 GDPR.

In that situation, the oft-overlookedArticle 27 GDPRrequires UK companies to appoint a representative in the EU as of 1 January 2021. This representative may be addressed by supervisory authorities and data subjects alike on all issues related to processing activities in order to ensure compliance with GDPR. It remains unclear at this stage whether this representative could be expose to a subsidiary liability for the entity they represent, as Recital 80 GDPR provides that The designated representative should be subject to enforcement proceedings in the event of non-compliance by the controller or processor, but such situation is not detailed within the articles of GDPR.

Note that the designation of such a representative would still be required for the joint-controller not established within the EU as detailed above.

Original post:

Brexit, GDPR, AND The Timeline for Data Breaches - The National Law Review

The whole social security section in the Brexit future relationship deal including pension and healthcare protections could be cancelled in future, the deal says.

The Connexion picked up on this issue while reading the full deal which is 1,449 pages long. The British in Europe campaign group coalition also says it has raised the point with the UK government in recent days.

The deal says the social security protocol comes to an end after 15 years unless renewed before then on mutual agreement of the UK and EU. If this is not to happen, either the EU or UK should notify the other of the wish to enter negotiations for an updated protocol, not less than one year before the 15-year termination date.

The deal also states that either party can cancel the protocol at any time in writing at which point it ends from the first day of the ninth month after the date of notification.

It states however that any rights of people covered by the protocol regarding entitlements which are based on periods completed or facts or events that occurred before [it] ceases to apply shall be retained.

The protocol covers items such as the fact that the UK state pensions of Britons moving to France from January 1, 2021 are uprated annually and not frozen, that UK state pensioners moving from that date may have their healthcare paid for by the UK, and that certain UK benefits remain exportable.

It also includes the fact that people resident in the UK may continue to participate in the Ehic visitors health card scheme or an equivalent.

BiE co-chair Fiona Godfrey said they have pointed this issue out to the UK government and it is on our radar. We noted that it could give rise to future difficulties for Britons, she said.

She added: Our feeling is that this section appears to have been one of the easier and smoother ones to negotiate.

However we saw the need for renewal and the potential for suspension whereas under the Withdrawal Agreement deal [covering rights of Britons living in the EU before 2021] the citizens rights section cannot be suspended by either side whatever happens.

We would hope neither side would want to suspend it but it's Brexit and we never know what's going to happen."

View original post here:

Brexit deal allows ending of pension, healthcare protection - The Connexion

FILE PHOTO: Irish Foreign Minister Simon Coveney and his German counterpart Heiko Maas attend a news conference in Berlin, Germany, December 11, 2020. REUTERS/Fabrizio Bensch/Pool

LONDON (Reuters) - Food supply problems in Northern Ireland are due to Brexit because there are now a certain amount of checks on goods going between Britain and Northern Ireland, Irish Foreign Minister Simon Coveney said.

British ministers have sought to play down the disruption of Brexit in recent days.

The supermarket shelves were full before Christmas and there are some issues now in terms of supply chains and so thats clearly a Brexit issue, Coveney told ITV.

The Northern Irish protocol means there are a certain amount of checks on goods coming from GB into Northern Ireland and that involves some disruption, he said.

Reporting by Guy Faulconbridge; Editing by Tom Hogue

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Brexit responsible for food supply problems in Northern Ireland, Ireland says - Reuters

Key takeaways

In the area of merger control, companies will need to factor in interactions with the UKs Competition and Market Authorities (CMA) as well as the European Commission (Commission) on deals that would otherwise have just been dealt with by the Commission alone. The UK has already been seeking to take jurisdiction over EU deals due to Brexit. The CMA sent a successful, strong and reasoned request for it to have jurisdiction in relation to the Liberty Global (Virgin Media/Mobile)/Telefnica (O2) merger then fast tracked it into Phase 2 in the UK. The two regimes have different timetables and different standards despite, on their face, having what was previously understood to be a similarly worded substantive test (contrast the draft CMA Merger Assessment Guidelines with the judgment of the court in relation toCK Telecoms UK Investments v. Commission). The CMA is developing a reputation for being increasingly interventionist (tougher on mergers) and the risk of a deal being cleared by the Commission but blocked by the CMA (similar to Sabre/Farelogix, which was cleared in the US but blocked by the CMA) is material.

In relation to the competition enforcement landscape, it is clear that the CMA has the ambition of being viewed as a top-tier authority for global issues and investigations. We will start to see the same issue or transactions giving rise to parallel investigations by the Commission and the CMA.

With regard to antitrust litigation, separate EU Member State and English litigation regimes already exist. However, various jurisdictional and related issues will no doubt arise. In relation to mergers, challenging a decision of the CMA is likely to be quicker even if substantively more difficult than a challenge, say, to the EUs General Court in relation to a Commission merger decision. One can expect an uptick in challenges to UK merger decisions before the specialist appellate court, the Competition Appeal Tribunal.

The creation of the CMA as an enhanced force on the international competition scene will undoubtedly shape UK competition law and merger control enforcement, but is likely to have wider effects.

1. Merger control

From 1 January 2021 (de facto, anything not formally notified by 23 December 2020 to the EU Commission), mergers will no longer be subject to the EU Merger Regulations (EUMR) one-stop shop principle in relation to the UK. UK turnover will no longer be relevant for determining whether a merger satisfies the EUMR jurisdictional thresholds. The CMA has demonstrated its intention to strengthen enforcement in the area of merger control. This intention can be witnessed in a variety of ways, including through its increasing proactivity in asserting UK jurisdiction over transactions. Indeed, the CMA has blocked deals where other authorities have not been able to do so for example, see Sabres proposed acquisition of Farelogix, blocked two days after the deal was cleared in the US.

In cases where a merger satisfies the UK and EU jurisdictional thresholds of the EUMR, the CMA and the Commission may conduct parallel assessments of the same merger. This will result in an additional burden for the businesses involved in a merger or acquisition, given the fact that the CMA is not a light touch authority when it considers there is a possible issue.

In its draft CMA 2021/2022 Annual Plan (Annual Plan), the CMA has stated that it is expecting a significant increase in its workload from January 2021 as it acquires jurisdiction over cases that were previously subject to the Commissions exclusive review. The CMA states:

We are ready to launch complex cartel and antitrust cases and merger investigations with a global dimension that would have previously been reserved to the European Commission. We have engaged in pre-notification discussions with parties from early autumn 2020. We already have experience of working with other competition authorities on cases with a potential impact on UK consumers. Recent examples include the investigation of the Atlantic Joint Business Agreement between American Airlines, members of International Consolidated Airlines Group and Finnair, as well as the Sabre/Farelogix airline booking merger which the CMA investigated alongside the US Department of Justice before blocking it. The CMA worked alongside other national competition authorities on the Prosafe/Floatel and McGraw Hill/Cengage mergers, both of which were abandoned.

Dual reviews by the Commission and CMA could have an impact on the deal timetable, as the UK review period is longer than that of the EU (for Phase 1: 40 working days for the CMA, compared to 25 working days under EU rules; and at Phase 2: 24 weeks for the CMA, compared to 90 working days (around 18 weeks) under EU rules (excluding extensions and stopping of the clock)). Even more important is the diverging approach to the substantive threshold for intervention not only at Phase 1 but, given recent judgments in the EU, more generally with respect to complex theories of harm.

Companies are going to have to get used to the often nuanced decision on whether, when and how to approach the CMA, given the scope for mischievous complainants to trigger a CMA investigation at a point when the merging parties can also be tied up by the UKs worldwide freezing order the initial enforcement order (IEO) which is generally imposed on completed deals. A cold reading of the draft CMA Merger Assessment Guidelines will not give merging parties much confidence, given the amount of discretion these give to the CMA.

2. Antitrust investigations

From 1 January, the CMA (and the UK concurrent sectoral regulators) will only investigate suspected infringements of UK domestic competition law (i.e., the Chapter I and Chapter II prohibitions in the Competition Act 1998), and will not have the power to investigate infringements of EU competition law. The EU Commission will look at EU issues in relation to new investigations Of course, conduct in one jurisdiction can breach the competition rules in the other as has always been the case.

The CMA has been making preparations to take on more complex cartel and enforcement cases post-Brexit, which previously fell within the remit of the Commission. In the 2020/21 Annual Plan, Andrea Coscelli, the CMAs chief executive, expressed his determination to turn the CMA into a robust champion for competition and for UK consumers. The draft 2021/22 annual plan (above) also clearly states the CMAs intention in this regard.

The risk that companies will face parallel scrutiny at the hands of both the Commission and the CMA is high. The CMA and concurrent sectoral regulators may well request information from companies where they consider that they may have jurisdiction to review UK elements of Commission proceedings, even where these have been formally initiated before the end of the Transition Period.

The leniency regimes of the Commission, the CMA and national competition authorities of Member States will remain separate. However, as there will likely be parallel proceedings and ultimately fines companies should bear in mind that a leniency application to the Commission alone, whether before or after the Transition Period, will not grant immunity from fines with regard to an investigation carried out in the UK. It will also not provide any protection for relevant employees and directors from prosecution under the UKs criminal cartel offence and/or director disqualification proceedings in relation to cartel activity in the UK.

In light of the above, companies should consider the following:

3. Antitrust litigation

The UK courts reserve the right to depart from EU law and may well seize the opportunity post-Brexit on many occasions. From 1 January, a UK court or tribunal will not be bound by any decisions made, on or after [the end of the Transition period] by the European Court (European Union (Withdrawal) Act 2018, section 6), but it may have regard to them.

Nevertheless, after the end of the Transition Period, Continued Competence Cases (i.e., antitrust cases initiated by the Commission before the end of the Transition Period) will continue to be binding evidence of a breach of competition law under the Competition Act 1998. This means that we can still have follow-on damages cases for Commission matters initiated before 31 December 2020. This may potentially give rise to a long tail of litigation rather than a sharp cut-off in January 2021. In any event, the Commission decisions are going to be persuasive evidence of a breach and will be treated as such in the UK courts.

It will also be interesting to see how courts and Member States will view proceedings brought in the UK, as the UK will be a third country from 1 January 2021.

We expect that the UK (more specifically, England and Wales) will remain an attractive jurisdiction for litigation as a result of its numerous benefits, including the form of access, disclosure and litigation funding.

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United Kingdom: Brexit The wholly parallel UK antitrust regime is here - GlobalComplianceNews

Jacob Rees-Moggs star has waned since his glory days leading backbench rebellions against Theresa May. He is on TV less, playing to smaller crowds. I caught him the other week on the BBC Parliament channel telling the Commons that fish unable to reach EU markets were better and happier because Brexit makes them more British.

Watching his performance, I recalled the perennially startling fact about Rees-Mogg: he is younger than Kylie Minogue (also Noel Gallagher and Damon Albarn, but Minogue is the more arresting comparator for some reason).

No one expects politicians and pop stars from the same generation to sound and dress alike, but how many people realise that the artist known to fans as Moggy is of Kylies generation? His style implies something ancient, but that is the point. It is a look, tailored for an audience just like any theatrical costume. Except his stage is parliament.

That is not to accuse Rees-Mogg of fakery. He hams up the fogeyism, but he plays it with conviction. He is an authentic adherent to a fashion subculture. Tory anachronism was his lifestyle choice, its uniform worn as sincerely as those of the punks, new romantics and goths who were around in his formative years. All are valid modes of Britishness, but not all include the hint at having sprung from some antique source of nationhood.

Costumes, like pageantry, have an important function in public life. The Queens speech, the ermine-clad Lords and bewigged clerks are all parts of the mechanism that excludes the masses while drawing them into complicity with their exclusion. They fence off politics as a spectacle for consumption, not an activity for participation. They promote a sentimental, passive detachment from power. The veneration of British democracys lineage is meant to demonstrate how archaism provides security through stability.

There is truth in that idea, and much fiction. Every modern country tells stories about its origins that impose a narrative of continuity over messy reality. For England (different in this respect to other nations of the UK) the tendency is taken to extreme lengths. The greatest myth a backdrop stretched so wide we hardly notice its there is the succession of monarchs that links Elizabeth II to William the Conqueror.

Generations have grown up thinking of 1066 as the origin of a line that, after some zig and zag, joins up with now. That long, casual stroke of the pen glides over savage occupation, butchery, usurpation, religious massacre, civil war, regicide, chaos, theocracy, military coup, foreign intervention, mass migrations, colonial genocides, and a constant cycle of rebellions and repressions. The treacherous, blood-drenched landscape has been covered with the polished parquet of National Trust houses, skated over effortlessly in period drama balls.

The English cast themselves as a peaceful people, occasionally provoked to war by foreigners (Germans, mostly). We are no more or less bellicose than human nature dictates. There is a credible claim to have been world leaders in adherence to law. Magna Carta was truly a landmark on the road to civilisation. But it is also a monument built to disproportionate height, admired at an angle that lets us avoid seeing uglier sights closer at hand.

But nothing matches victory over the Third Reich as a resource for making us feel better about ourselves. It was indeed a magnificent thing that Britain did (in alliance with others), but not the only significant thing that happened in modern times, as its compulsive dramatisation sometimes implies. The attachment to the collective endeavour of blitz spirit speaks to insecurity about national cohesion. We idealise the time we stuck together, from fear that the glue is thinly applied.

Solidarity is a defence against trauma, which is why war metaphors abound in the struggle against Covid. But there is dishonesty in the claim that unity and patience are solutions to problems of government. The pandemic affects everyone, but not equally. There are limited resources and places to assign in the queue for help. Appeals to stoical togetherness camouflage the exercise of political priorities.

A functional democracy recognises that societies contain competing interests. Parties represent those forces and mediate between them. Conflicts are managed without recourse to actual fighting. But British democracy has a subtly different mechanism. The ruling class defuses social grievance by selectively recruiting from the ranks of the aggrieved.

The Conservative party is a brilliant machine for adapting to social pressure from below, remaking itself to absorb new supporters without the established elite having to surrender power. It happened in the early 1980s, with the sale of council houses. It happened with Brexit and the co-opting of working-class red wall voters. It is a pattern predating the modern party, going back to the 19th-century reform acts and selective extension of voting rights.

Societys upper echelons have been historically permeable, by European standards, admitting individuals from lowly backgrounds if they have the right education, wear the right clothes, speak with the right accent. That flexibility is one of the ways England avoided violent revolution on the French model.

The price is dilution of the reforming spirit, coupled with a weird aristo-centric populism that conflates meritocracy and social climbing. Our version of the American dream is a perverse heritage myth that the lives of a tiny, rich minority can tell a shared national story. It is the fantasy that we all dressed in finery once upon a time. The servants and peasants who were chopped to bits to settle obscure vendettas between noble families must have been someone elses great-great-great-grandparents.

The genius of this system is its ability to contain violent upheavals behind the veneer of continuity. Brexit is just the latest iteration: upsetting the established order while somehow leaving the established order untroubled, a rebellion that succeeds by inflicting the highest economic cost on the places that rebelled.

It is typically English: a revolution without emancipation. It ends with Jacob Rees-Mogg, in fancy dress, strutting the parliamentary stage as if he has been there for centuries, although he was born a year after Kylie Minogue. Take back control? We should be so lucky.

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Brexit was a typically English revolution one that left the elites unharmed - The Guardian