Of the many remarkable aspects of the NGEU pandemic response, two stand out in relation to repayment: whom will be liable to repay the debt and if indeed the debt will be repaid. With regard to Whom, the Own Resources Decision makes the Member States the default debtors, but not in proportion to the amount they have received. With regard to if, the EU is proposing new own resources, which may only raise enough money to repay the debt if the objectives behind NGEU spending fail. It looks like the EU, in trying to respond to one crisis, has created a crisis of credibility of its own making.

The Windsor Framework has provided an avenue for the practical way in which the Northern Ireland Protocol is implemented to be adjusted, in order to ease the tensions surrounding how EU rules are applied in Northern Ireland as compared with the rest of the UK. So, does the Windsor Framework indicate the future potential direction of integration between the EU and the UK, or is it just demonstrable of the return to British pragmatism?

Recent developments indicate the potential direction of legal divergence between UK law and EU law, notably from both sides. The aim of this post is to give an overview of these divergences, which ultimately give rise to a series of pressing questions: are we seeing agendas to facilitate full divergence, or not? If so, is it divergence in substance or form?

The UK is essentially a third country. This is not just because we are now more than two years from the effective date of Brexit; rather, as this post will propound, there have been developments in the handling of Brexit in the UK which indicate a distinct shift towards the absorption of Brexit into the more traditional operation of the UK constitution. Consequently, it appears that Brexit is being constitutionalised.

As the UK is trying to manage a fuel crisis and a shortage of delivery drivers, we are left to wonder if the root of the issue is a question of crisis (mis) management or sovereignty (mis) management. The same goes for the EU, as its crisis (mis) management questions its ability to maintain the values and foundational principles that are at the very core of its own essence. Do the two cases provide examples as how to manage a crisis or how to manage a new sovereignty?