Brussels told the UK on Thursday to immediately scrap its plans to override Britain's Brexit treaty or face legal action, in a sharp escalation of the two sides’ dispute over the measures.
In a terse statement, the European Commission handed Britain a deadline of the end of September to withdraw its planned internal market bill. It warned that the draft legislation was a threat to the Good Friday Agreement, saying it had “seriously damaged trust between the EU and the UK”.
In a written “legal position”, also published on Thursday, the UK conceded that the bill created powers that could “be exercised in a way that is incompatible with provisions of the withdrawal agreement”.