Just over a year ago the UK completed its exit from the European Union. While that should have been the end of it and while there has been an ongoing pandemic to deal with, Brexit continued to dominate the headlines with disputes over fishing and the Northern Ireland Protocol garnering the most attention. As the Johnson premiership continues to roll on, it is likely that the significant decline in trade will also become a focus of criticism.

Moving into 2022 and there are still some important legal issues that remain on the table. In the week before Christmas Lord Frost resigned as Brexit Minister and while he cited disagreements with the government over COVID policy as the reason for his own departure, it had become increasingly obvious that his position was untenable as the very person who had negotiated the withdrawal agreement was now arguing how bad and unfair that agreement was for the UK.

Liz Truss will take on that role in the new year but the Northern Ireland Protocol, that caused Frost so much consternation, is still in place. In theory this should make renegotiating the deal a little bit easier but there is still a long way to go. Ironically the mess that the UK has made of the Brexit process could work to their advantage. One of the concerns of the EU was that a seamless transition into a Brexit paradise would encourage other countries to leave the group but worries along those lines seem quite far away right now. Making customs checks and paperwork a little less bureaucratic would benefit both sides and no longer be as much of a political embarrassment now as it might have been during the height of negotiations.

A change like the one described above could now come about later on in the year but a major stumbling block will continue to be the role played the by the European Court of Justice in relation to the Northern Ireland Protocol. In essence the UK does not want that court to have any sort of oversight whatsoever but it is difficult to see the EU ever agreeing to go that far.

It feels like a lifetime ago but this time last year the European Commission got into a dispute with the pharmaceutical company AstraZeneca over the delivery of vaccines for COVID-19. Later that would spill into a dispute with the UK whereby the President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, threatened to trigger Article 16 of the Northern Ireland Protocol and introduce a form of export control.

That was probably the low point of relations between the UK and the EU and it is gratifying that things are on a much more stable footing now. Nevertheless the neighbours are still far from being on good terms and 2022 could end up being a pivotal year for either rebuilding trust or eroding it further.