On 15 September 2025, IEEP UK hosted an online webinar to launch our Divergence in UK/EU Environmental Policy: State of Play 2025 report, which provides an overview of the UK/EU divergence since Brexit across a broad swathe of environmental themes, from agriculture and biodiversity to waste and water.

Chaired by IEEP UK Executive Director Ben Reynolds, the webinar began with Michael Nicholson, Head of Policy at IEEP UK, presenting the report’s findings on the growing divergence between UK and EU environmental policy five years after Brexit. He noted that the EU has moved faster in strengthening environmental legislation, while the UK has largely failed to keep pace with new regulations and often ‘diverged by default’. He stressed that while there are bright spots – such as joint UK and Scottish action on Sandeels – both sides are at risk of diluting environmental ambition in the pursuit of economic growth.

The panel discussion explored these themes in greater depth. Dr Viviane Gravey, Senior Lecturer in European Politics at Queen’s University Belfast, pointed to environmental governance in the UK as another unexpected bright spot, highlighting the role the OEP has played in making the arguments against rollbacks in environmental protections. The European Environmental Bureau’s Patrizia Heidegger warned of a potential “race to the bottom,” particularly around chemicals regulation, and called for closer UK–EU collaboration. Joël Reland from UK in a Changing Europe highlighted that divergence is often impractical for producers and politically unpopular, and noted that the UK’s more limited regulatory capacity since Brexit has made passive divergence more likely. Panellists also discussed the significance of dynamic alignment under the reset talks, tensions between devolved administrations and Westminster, and the wider risk of reduced environmental ambition in both the UK and EU.

You can watch the full recording of the webinar below, or by following this link. You can explore the findings of the report through our interactive webpages, or download the full report here.