Top court to say if UK can appeal against ruling on case about reversing Brexit

Luxembourg/London) — A UK supreme court panel will decide whether to allow the British government to appeal against a Scottish ruling that sent a case on the reversibility of the Brexit process to the EU’s top tribunal.

The application for permission to appeal has been referred to a panel of supreme court president Brenda Hale, deputy president Robert Reed and Patrick Hodge. The court said Friday that it “is aware of the urgency of this matter” in the e-mailed statement acknowledging the application.

The case would be the third related to Brexit to reach the UK’s top court. In early 2017, the court ruled that the government had to get the approval of Parliament to trigger article 50 and in July of this year, the tribunal heard a case related to Scotland and Wales input into leaving the EU.

If the UK judges don’t intervene, the question the bloc’s top judges will have to answer is whether under EU law the so-called Article 50 notice, which officially triggered the Brexit process, can be unilaterally revoked by the UK, and if so, under what conditions.

The UK has already told the EU judges that the case is frivolous because it has no plans to halt Brexit. In a summary of its submissions to the EU court published November 6, the government said that it “does not intend to revoke the notice it has given” and that “such revocation is simply not in any sense meaningfully in prospect”.

Bloomberg