“Such practices violate EU law and must come to an end”. With this strongly worded statement, the EU Commissioner for Economic and Financial Affairs, Taxation and Customs Union, Pierre Moscovici, may well have sounded the death knell for the long-term viability of lease-purchase schemes available to private yacht purchasers in Cyprus and, most notably, Malta. The European Commission has on 8 March 2018 sent letters of formal notice to Malta, Cyprus (and also Greece) for not

“It’s an ill wind that blows nobody any good” In the storm of economic uncertainty and political infighting that has followed the outcome of the referendum of the 23rd June, it is now perhaps time to take a step back and look at the potential impact of Brexit upon the marine sector. Economists have been falling over themselves to predict a range of grim scenarios for the impact on UK GDP of the vote, with negative impacts of between 2 and 8% forecasted depending on what trade

As dawn broke on Friday 24 June 2016, it became clear that the UK electorate had made a historic decision to bring to an end its 43 years of EU membership. The much discussed ‘Brexit’ would finally become a reality. While the 52%/48% decision to leave the EU is on the face of it clear, the overall result masks a very divided United Kingdom. While Wales and England voted to leave the EU, London, Northern Ireland and most notably Scotland, all voted to remain within the EU –

As opinion polls in the UK appear to indicate some momentum towards Brexit, we have pondered, as lawyers, just how easy would it be legally for the UK to withdraw from the European Union. The answer is largely to be found in Article 50 of the Treaty On the European Union. Article 50(1) states that “any Member State may decide to withdraw from the Union in accordance with its own constitutional requirements”. What are those constitutional requirements in the UK? As the UK’s

“Let a hundred flowers bloom” Mao Zedong Unsurprisingly unnoticed by a press dominated by the big themes of the UK’s relationship with Europe, the European Parliament on 28 April approved the European Council’s common position on the so-called “technical pillar” of the Fourth Railway Package. While this may seem to some another instance of Brussels gobbledegook, what it signifies is that progress is being made towards harmonising safety authorisations across Europe for signal

In all the heated debate in the UK about “Brexit” and the upcoming referendum, one aspect of EU regulation that is of crucial importance to the maritime industries has rather gone under the radar. This is the so-called EU Port Services Regulation or “PSR” which seeks to improve the efficiency and competitiveness of the EU port sector by, inter alia, increasing financial transparency in the ports sector both in terms of public funding that ports may receive and their charges t