Levelling up a Level playing field: competition and subsidies in post-Brexit Britain

Abstract

Chapter 18 analyses how the EU-UK TCA addresses competition issues and the level playing field and argues that post-Brexit EU and UK competition rules have scope to diverge. One area Andrea Biondi and Anneli Howard highlight is state aid and subsidy control where, in the light of the Conservative government's levelling up agenda, the UK government may become more interventionist with its state aid policies than it was during the time of EU membership. But Biondi and Howard also illustrate the consequences of Brexit on UK state aid control and that the UK was initially faced with what they describe as the 'rather bizarre situation' that, one the one hand the UK did not have any 'domestic' provisions on state aid law as it decided in the aftermath of the EU-UK TCA not to keep state aid as EU Retained law. However, on the other hand, they highlight that UK Parliament, in ratifying the EU-UK TCA decided to substantially give immediate effect to the EU-UK TCA provisions meaning that the chapter on subsidies, to the extent that the UK is obliged to implement it, is applicable in domestic law. This 'regulatory gap' required the UK to adopt a new regime to regulate the granting of subsidies and they explore the main parameters of the Subsidy Control Act 2022.