I love the smell of a leaked legal service opinion in the morning

The conclusion: the EU Council legal service says that it's OK for the Brexit deal to be concluded with the UK by the EU only, not needing Member States' participation

The reasoning: the legal service distinguishes between competences reserved to Member States, and competences shared with the EU. For the latter, the EU has the choice of concluding an EU-only treaty.

The legal service summarises the prior case law backing up its interpretation.

It refers to the Weddell case, concerning competence to conclude a treaty on the Antarctic environment, where Member States *could* be involved. But that was based on the particular legal features of the Antarctic treaty; and the UK is not Antarctica.

As the transition period ends, the #BrexitDeal applies from tomorrow. But there's also a parallel significant legal change - most of the rest of the withdrawal agreement starts to apply. A thread on the legal issues in the rest of that agreement.

The citizens' rights provisions of the withdrawal agreement (on EU citizens who moved to the UK, and UK citizens who moved to the EU, before the end of the transition period) start to apply.

Annotation and detailed analysis of those provisions here:

After today, UK citizens newly moving to the EU, or EU citizens newly moving to the UK, are in principle governed by national law (partly harmonised by the EU, on the EU side).

However, the #BrexitDeal contains some provisions on visas for service providers.

The #BrexitDeal also refers to the matching unilateral decisions of the EU and UK to waive a visa requirement for short tourist visits. Analysis of the EU law on that issue here:

UK citizens resident in the EU on the basis of the withdrawal agreement (or who move to EU in future) should be covered by the EU law on long-term resident non-EU citizens, which provides for a limited form of mobility between Member States. Analysis here:

Latest EU infringement proceedings - includes possible return to EU court to request fines re Polish forest protection and Hungarian law on NGOs; also includes environmental law, racism hate speech law, European Arrest Warrant

Some highlights from the infringement proceedings: details of the Commission allegations about failure to apply EU criminal law on racism and xenophobia, which includes Holocaust denial

The Commission alleges that three Member States have tried to shelter their own citizens from the application of European Arrest Warrants

Conversely the Commission claims that three Member States don't correctly apply EU law on presumption of innocence.

The Commission alleges that Hungary voted against the EU position on drugs policy in the United Nations re cannabis