Policy background
On 23 June 2016, more than 17 million citizens of the UK and Gibraltar voted for the UK to leave the European Union (EU). Since then, the UK has pushed forward with building a framework for the future relationship between the UK and the EU through a series of pieces of legislation.
	The first step was to process the UK's departure through the EU (Notification of Withdrawal) Act 2017. This was followed by the EUWA and the European Union (Withdrawal Agreement) Act 2020.
	On 31 January 2020, the UK left the European Union. Pursuant to the Withdrawal Agreement, at the end of the Transition Period at 11pm on 31 December 2020, the UK recovered its full economic and political independence. As such, the UK is no longer part of the EU Single Market or the EU Customs Union, and is therefore no longer bound by its laws and regulations.
	The UK and EU signed a Trade and Cooperation Agreement on 30 December 2020 on the terms of their future relationship. This was implemented in the European Union (Future Relationship) Act 2020.
	To maintain legal certainty as the UK ended the Transition Period, the EUWA allowed for the retention of most EU law, as it applied in the UK legal system on 31 December 2020. EUWA incorporated EU law that applied to the UK onto the statute book as "retained EU law" (REUL), creating a new category of domestic law possessing most of the special features of EU law.
	REUL consists of a combination of EU regulations, decisions and tertiary legislation, domestic legislation passed to implement EU directives, general principles of EU law, directly effective rights and obligations developed in relevant case law of the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU), and other principles developed in that case law and the case law of the UK domestic courts.
	EUWA defined REUL by reference to three categories:
Section 2 preserved EU-derived domestic legislation. This (typically) covers any primary or secondary legislation implementing one or more EU obligations, including those under EU directives.
Section 3 incorporated direct EU legislation into domestic law. This is defined as all EU regulations, decisions or tertiary legislation that had direct application in the UK, including certain parts of the EEA agreement.
Section 4 preserved any directly effective rights, powers, liabilities, obligations, restrictions, remedies and procedures in EU law into domestic law.
	Retained case law and retained general principles of EU law were applied to the interpretation of REUL, under section 6 of EUWA. The REUL framework established by EUWA, however, was not intended to be maintained indefinitely on the UK statute book. The Retained EU Law (Revocation and Reform) Act facilitates the amendment, restatement or revocation and replacement of REUL and assimilates REUL remaining in force after the end of 2023 by removing the special EU law features attached to it.
	To achieve this, the Act includes provisions outlined below.