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.
Applying this reasoning to the UK deal, the legal service says that there's nothing in it which involves exclusive Member State competence. Therefore the EU can choose to conclude it as an EU-only treaty.
In particular competence is shared as regards the social security and aviation parts of the treaty. But again: this means that there's a choice to conclude the treaty as an EU-only treaty, or also with Member States as parties.
The legal service also notes that the UK and individual Member States can sign bilateral agreements within the scope of the Brexit deal - subject to the limits set out in the agreement.
Just thinking of all the times people argued that the treaty would *have* to be ratified by all the Member States - and all the times I replied that we would have to wait and see.
An initial reaction to the legal service opinion from the Walloon Parliament...
Full text of the Council legal service opinion on the Brexit deal now here - https://t.co/zqemdVtQNn

More from Legal

1/ On Jan 2 we introduced Proud Boy Billy Knutson to the world. Billy said he was going to DC to "literally go Antifa hunting."

Well, Proud Boy Billy Knutson stormed the U.S. capitol with his fellow terrorists and participated in a failed coup:
https://t.co/Ctb7vThYhs


2/ Terrorist Proud Boy Billy Knutson placing himself at the scene of the failed coup in DC to overthrow democracy:


3/ From terrorist Proud Boy Billy Knutson's Parler in his own words:

PS: We see Texas Charter Plane 5 Jenna Ryan made the big time at the failed U.S. coup in DC


4/ FAIR USE claim: shows context in tweets

Terrorist Proud Boy Billy Knutson's Parler video where you can hear him screaming, "Stand Back and Stand By Motherf*ckers!" while standing on the US capitol steps. Speaker says they'll be back on Inauguration Day.


5/ Terrorist Proud Boy Billy Knutson already lost his Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, & Twitter before heading to DC

However @Spotify & @YouTube continue to platform Billy Knutson, aka Playboy The Beast, a terrorist that participated in the U.S. failed
1/

In light of this serious cyber attack and this being the second in a row that I've heard in the past few weeks, I'd like to take this moment to talk about the cyber attack known as #phishing so that others do not fall prey to it and stay safe online.

Thread starts:


2/

Phishing is usually a means of contacting you by impersonation to gather data, oversimplifying it. This can happen in several ways:
1. URL similarities: Usually when people visit a webpage, most people never check the URL (Uniform Resource Locator). For example, a fake URL of


3/

https://t.co/x0brAMyKgF would be https://t.co/HrdE9hklv1. Seem the same, right? No. I've replaced one single character of "L" in @Google with "I". Therefore, your entire data would be redirected to the server that is hosting GOOGIE, instead of GOOGLE. This is commonly

4/

hackers perform cyber attacks. However this is only one of many.
Many people might forward you genuine links with small "add-ons" which enter your system like a Trojan Horse. A beautiful meme of keyboard cat on the outside but a vicious data-mining link on the inside.
Plus


5/

There's also other means of doing this. And you might think "But dude, who's stupid enough to fall for it?"
LOTS of UNINFORMED people are.
2020 was a record breaking year for phishing websites and attacks as per @techradar. It's not just through

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