After the vote last year I read any number of commentators who said the biggest problems with trying to reach an agreement with the EU would come with the trade deal because any final agreement would have to be unanimously approved by the 32 national parliaments. The withdrawal agreement had only to receive a qualified majority vote. In a separate case the EU Commission asked the ECJ if national parliaments actually did have a veto on trade deals, specifically over the one with Singapore. They have now giving their ruling.
It is obviously a bit confusing for the press. The Telegraph (HERE) and the Guardian (HERE) say the European Union does not need to seek ratification of a trade deal by the national and local parliaments while Reuters (HERE) claim, "Britain may have to wait - and hope - for every single one of its European Union neighbours to give full legislative consent before it can fully benefit from any post-Brexit free trade deal, EU judges ruled on Tuesday".
You might think it impossible for two such diametrically opposed reports to be written about the same event and I am not sure how to view it. As far as I can see this is what means:
1. The withdrawal agreement only needs to be signed off by QMV in Brussels by the European Council - in other words just the 27 heads of government. This hasn't changed.
2. A trade deal needs unanimous approval in Brussels by the European Council - provided it falls totally into the competence of the Commission, i.e. it is not a mixed agreement with shared competence.
3. Reuters rely on a part of the ruling that covers dispute settlement and they say, "by removing disputes from the jurisdiction of domestic courts, this required national consent".
So, national parliaments may have a veto IF the trade deal removes the dispute settlement mechanism from domestic courts - and they rely on the head of international trade at law firm Linklaters who said, "Britain would need to decide if it wanted a more modest agreement likely to be backed or the most comprehensive deal possible that risked falling hostage to member states". So, although on the surface it seems to make a deal easier to agree, in practice it may force us away from the "deep and special partnership" that the prime minister said she wanted.
