Medicinal and agrochemical products can be granted a Supplementary Protection Certificate, an intellectual property right associated with patents, to provide up to five years of additional rights and protections once their patents have expired. In order to apply for an SPC, a product must receive approval to be sold on the UK market. Under the Northern Ireland/Ireland Protocol, products to be sold in Northern Ireland must obtain approval under EU law, whilst products to be sold in the rest of the UK will obtain approval under UK law. Currently, this marketing authorisation is only given on a UK-wide basis. This regulation amends the market authorisation process to enable authorisations to be granted for the Northern Ireland market only and for the Great Britain market only.
Documents to download
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Open Skies Agreement (Membership) Bill (224 KB, PDF)
The Open Skies Agreement (Membership) Bill [HL] is a private member’s bill introduced by Baroness Randerson (Liberal Democrat). It had its first reading on 29 June 2017 and is scheduled to have its second reading on 26 January 2018. The Bill seeks to ensure that during its negotiations with the EU, the UK Government must have regard to the desirability of continuing to participate in the Open Skies Agreement between the European Union and the United States of America once the UK withdraws from the EU.
The US Department of State has described its ‘open skies’ agreements as policies designed to “eliminate government involvement in airline decision-making about routes, capacity, and pricing in international markets”. The US has pursued the establishment of such agreements since 1992. This followed the liberalisation of the US’s internal domestic market, enabled by its Airline Deregulation Act 1978 (which removed the regulation of fares, routes and schedules in the US domestic market).
Within the context of EU aviation agreements with the US, the Open Skies Agreement is most often used to refer to the EU-US Air Transport Agreement (hence forth also referred to as the Open Skies Agreement in this briefing). This is an agreement between the EU and the US to enable greater cooperation in aviation and greater market access.
This Lords Library Briefing provides information on the Agreement and provides a summary of the House of Lords European Union Committee’s consideration of this issue in its report Brexit: Trade in Non-Financial Services.
Related Links
Documents to download
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Open Skies Agreement (Membership) Bill (224 KB, PDF)
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The Audiovisual Media Services (Amendment) (EU Exit) Regulations 2020 govern how on-demand programming and video-sharing platforms will be regulated after the Brexit transition period ends.
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The regulation of product safety, and weights and measures, is based on EU law. The European Union (Withdrawal) Act 2018 brings this EU law into UK statute, so that it will continue to have effect after the end of the transition period. Amendments since have made to enable this framework to operate smoothly in the UK, and added provisions such as a UK conformity mark. This article looks at a further statutory instrument that amends retained EU law in the area, particularly in light of the Northern Ireland Protocol.
