Campaigners on both sides of the Brexit divide have voiced fears after the government revealed it will continue to adopt EU regulations in the UK in 2019.
Cabinet Office minister Chloe Smith revealed in an answer to a written question that there are currently plans to adopt nine regulations - legislation which all member states must abide by - during the course of 2018 and 2019. The UK is due to leave the union at the end of March next year.
“My department have introduced no regulations as a result of EU Legislation since 23 June 2016,” Smith said, adding that the exact number yet to be implemented is “subject to ongoing negotiations”.
Eloise Todd, CEO of the pro-Europe Best For Britain campaign said the plans would make people question whether Brexit is “really worth it”.
She told HuffPost UK: “The government, for all its protestations, will still be enacting EU rules in 2019, a year after we left and still paying the EU.
“So right now we have a say over those rules - we’d be giving all that power up to follow the same rules anyway. It’s farcical.
“The only difference is that we will be outside and families will be poorer, jobs less secure and Britain more isolated.”
EU regulations cover a wide range of areas, from agriculture to communications.
Theresa May admitted last year that the UK will need to keep some existing ones, as it will have neither the time nor the expertise to formulate its own regulatory bodies.
Jayne Adye, director of cross-party Leave campaign group Get Britain Out, said members were “deeply disappointed” that proposed Brexit transitional period terms would subject Britain to EU law until 2020, which she described as “anti-democratic madness”.
“It is unacceptable that the great British public will be subject to the laws of the European Union over four years since the vote to leave,” she added.
“Britons voted to take back control – the government seems to have missed that memo.
“The UK will cease to have members in the European Parliament after March 2019, yet still be subject to European Union laws until the end of 2020.
“EU regulations by their inherent nature are never tailored to the specific needs of the UK. With a clean Brexit, the British Parliament will be able to make all the laws for the British people.”
HuffPost UK understands EU regulations on recycling, motor insurance and energy are among those that could be adopted during the UK’s transitional period.