Policy Developments and Divergence:
Thematic Breakdown
Policy Themes
Air
Divergence Summary
Since the UK’s exit from the EU, the four constituent nations of the UK have generally been left behind by EU legislative and policy developments within matters of air policy, with the UK experiencing a form of ‘passive divergence’ from the EU. There has also been one case of regression where UK policy has gone backwards – removal of articles 9 and 10 of the National Emissions Ceiling Regulations.
The main area of UK-EU divergence is with regard to ambient air quality targets. The passing of the 2024 Ambient Air Quality Directive brought EU air quality targets closer towards standards recommended by the World Health Organization. However, it is important to note that Scotland’s PM10 target is more ambitious than the new target set by the EU.
There has also been a ‘divergence by default’ (or ‘passive’ divergence) with regard to F-Gases and ozone depleting substances regulation between GB and the EU and industrial emissions regulation between the UK and EU.
However, there have also been some bright spots too. For example, the decision by the UK Government to reinstate the headline target of 2030 for the phaseout of the internal combustion engine is ahead of the EU’s target of 2035. Furthermore, a mooted expansion of industrial emissions regulation to cover the dairy and intensive beef sectors, if it comes to fruition, would signal further progressive policy.
A European Commission communication establishing a Zero Pollution Action Plan was published in 2021 and set out a major reframing of the EU’s long-term ambition on a number of policy areas, including air quality. It contains a headline commitment to reduce air pollution ‘to levels no longer harmful to health and natural ecosystems’ by 2050. To help achieve this, the EU passed in December 2024 a key aspect of this plan – a revised Ambient Air Quality Directive (AAQD). This replaces a directive from 2008 which the UK had implemented whilst a member of the EU.
The AAQD aims to bring EU ambient air quality standards closer to World Health Organization (WHO) recommendations by 2030, though has been criticised by NGOs for not fully aligning with them. It updates binding standards on various major pollutants, including PM2.5 and PM10, nitrogen dioxide (NO2), sulphur dioxide (SO2) and ozone (O3), introducing more stringent limit values and tighter deadlines for compliance. For example, under the AAQD, the annual mean limit for PM2.5 in the EU is set to decrease from 25μg/m3 to 10μg/m3 by 2030, though this remains above the WHO’s most recent guideline value of 5μg/m3. Table 1 provides a comparison of current and 2030 target EU limit values for major pollutants compared with WHO guidelines and the four UK administrations. You can view Table 1 by downloading the full PDF report.
There have been several other changes to EU air quality policy causing legislative divergence with the UK. One example is the updated 2024 Industrial Emissions Directive (IED 2.0), a major piece of legislation which has expanded its scope to cover a higher percentage of large pig and poultry farms, as well as large battery manufacturing facilities. It notably omits cattle farming, though includes a provision for the European Commission to review the IED’s efficacy by the end of 2026, including options to address emissions from cattle. The adoption of this new directive represents a significant divergence from UK legislation in this area which, as explained below, remains largely in line with the original 2010 IED.
The EU’s Regulation on Fluorinated Greenhouse Gases (F-gases), which came into force in 2024, commits to the phasing out of hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs) – the most common type of F-gas – by 2050. It also sets new caps on EU production of HFCs, bans the use of certain F-gases in certain applications where more environmentally friendly alternatives exist, and expands F-gas recovery obligations to more sectors. F-gas regulation in Great Britain has not kept pace with these progressive changes; a 2022 UK government review of existing F-gas regulation identified necessary changes to policy which, if implemented, could bring GB into greater alignment with the EU and Northern Ireland. However, no major policy or regulatory updates concerning F-gases have been made since the publication of this review.
In 2024 the EU also adopted a new Regulation on Ozone-Depleting Substances (ODS), which recast the existing 2009 Regulation. Building on previous EU legislation implementing the Montreal Protocol, it expedites the phase-out of ODS by further restricting exemptions on their use, and by making explicit a blanket ban on the placing on the market of any product or equipment containing or relying on ozone depleting-substances. The regulation also makes mandatory the recovery and destruction of ODS from equipment (such as refrigeration systems). These changes open up divergence with GB legislation in this area, which has not been updated since Brexit and continues to be based upon the EU’s 2009 ODS Regulation.
The adoption of a regulation in April 2023 to strengthen the CO2 emission performance standards for new passenger cars and light commercial vehicles set a target to ban new internal combustion cars and vans within the EU’s internal market by 2035. This is an area where the EU is behind the UK; in April 2025, the UK Government announced that the Zero Emissions Vehicle Mandate – which applies across the UK – will be updated once again, reverting the phase out date for the sale of new petrol and diesel cars to 2030, after the previous government had delayed it to 2035. Hybrid cars and vans with internal combustion engines will be able to be sold until 2035.
The new Euro 7 vehicle emissions standard will come into force in July 2025, and alongside tighter restrictions on exhaust emissions, is the first of these standards to include limits on non-exhaust emissions, including tyres and brakes.
Transboundary air pollutants are regulated at a UK-wide level under the National Emissions Ceiling Regulations, which derive from an EU directive. Controversially, using powers under the Retained EU Law (Revocation and Reform) Act 2023, the UK Government revoked regulations 9 and 10 of these regulations, thereby removing its obligation to produce and consult on a national air pollution control programme (NAPCP). As IEEP UK reported in 2024, this change constituted a regression on legislative requirements that had existed at the point of Brexit. There has been no further update on the potential for the production of future NAPCPs from government since 2023.
Prior to coming into power, the Labour Government pledged to bring in a new Clean Air Act, but has since watered this down to instead focus on developing a new air quality strategy to ‘deliver legally binding targets on improving air quality’ building on the previous 2023 Air Quality Strategy.
Legislative targets for major pollutants in England currently lag behind the EU 2030 targets, specifically those for PM2.5, PM10, NO2, and O3. PM2.5 is the only target to have been refined since Brexit, with a 2040 target of 10 μg/m3 set under the Environmental Targets (Fine Particulate Matter) (England) Regulations 2023, notably 10 years behind the EU’s PM2.5 target. Other targets for major pollutants are still regulated by The Air Quality Standards Regulations 2010 which is derived from the 2008 Ambient Air Quality Directive.
Industrial emissions in England are regulated by The Environmental Permitting Regulations (England and Wales) 2016, which transposed the EU’s 2010 Industrial Emissions Directive (IED). While England has not matched the EU in expanding the legislation’s scope to cover battery manufacturing facilities, the UK Government has previously committed to extending permitting to the dairy and intensive beef sectors.
In Northern Ireland, a public discussion document was published in 2020 with the aim of replacing the 2007 UK-wide air quality strategy and setting new targets for ambient air quality. However, it is unclear whether this is still the aim of the current administration.
The Pollution Prevention and Control Regulations (Northern Ireland) 2013 regulate industrial emissions in NI and transposed the EU IED. As is the case in the rest of the UK, NI has not moved to incorporate battery production facilities into the scope of this legislation, and as such now lags behind the EU in this regard.
Under the terms of the UK’s withdrawal agreement, the EU’s 2024 Regulation on fluorinated greenhouse gases (F-gases) and 2024 Regulation on ozone-depleting substances both apply in Northern Ireland, which opens up divergence with the rest of the UK.
Scotland’s current national strategy for air quality is Cleaner Air for Scotland 2 – Towards a Better Place for Everyone. Ambient air quality in Scotland continues to be regulated by the Air Quality Standards (Scotland) Regulations 2010, and its targets for major pollutants, particularly PM2.5 and PM10, are the most ambitious in the UK, and its current PM10 target is more demanding than the EU’s target for 2030.
Industrial emissions in Scotland are regulated by The Pollution Prevention and Control (Scotland) Regulations, which transposed the EU’s IED. As in England, Scotland has not matched the EU in including battery manufacturing facilities within the scope of this regulation.
In 2020, the Welsh Government published the Clean Air Plan for Wales, a national air quality strategy. The document outlines a cross-cutting 10-year strategic plan, taking actions across transport, planning, industry and agriculture to reduce air pollution and improve outcomes for human health and biodiversity.
The Environment (Air Quality and Soundscapes) (Wales) Act 2024 is a significant step in Welsh air quality legislation. Building on commitments made in the Clean Air Plan, it contains binding legislative commitments to update targets for PM2.5 and one other pollutant by 2027 and 2030 respectively. Welsh air quality targets are currently set by The Air Quality Standards (Wales) Regulations 2010 and are less ambitious for major pollutants than Scotland’s targets, as well as the new targets under the AAQD (as shown in Table 1 in the full PDF report).
Agriculture and Land Use
Divergence Summary
In leaving the European Union, the UK also left the Common Agricultural Policy. With agricultural policy in the UK devolved to the four constituent parts, each has had the challenge of developing new ways to support farmers and improve environmental outcomes, or to maintain a system similar to that it left. Each has developed its own legal framework resulting in divergence from the EU’s Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) and each other. Meanwhile policy in the EU has not stood still with the current CAP (for 2023-2027) informed by greater environmental ambition than previously, albeit keeping to the same broad structure and approach. England’s approach under the Environmental Land Management Scheme marks a divergence with arguably a more environmentally focussed approach which is more targeted on public goods and the environment. Whilst Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland are also developing their own approaches, that would on paper focus more on environmental benefits than CAP, for now, their approaches do not diverge as significantly from that of the EU as England’s.
The speed, ambition and detail of change across the UK has varied, but all UK farmers have had to contend with significantly less certainty over future payments than their EU counterparts, with CAP budgets planned in 7-year cycles, giving farmers medium term predictability. In devolved administrations this has been compounded by the fact that whilst agricultural policy is devolved, Westminster determines the overall budget. However, all UK farmers have had to cope with shorter term budgets and rapid changes in schemes, creating significant anxiety and resistance from many in the farming community, which amongst other things might be to the detriment of the environmental impact of these new schemes.
The current 2023 – 2027 CAP programme is distinct from the previous 2014-2020 CAP, in place when the UK left the EU, in both the increased environmental focus and the greater flexibility for Member States in implementation. The overall objectives, broad strategies and minimum environmental conditions and targets were set at EU level, but Member States have had greater flexibility in the interventions to achieve these, which were set out in national CAP Strategic Plans.
The Commission made environmental and climate issues a priority in the 2023 – 2027 CAP and in 2020, as negotiations for the current CAP were getting underway, it published two key strategies reflecting these priorities: From Farm to Fork and the Biodiversity Strategy for 2030. Both with highly ambitious, but non-binding targets.
Member States were expected to incorporate relevant parts of both strategies into their Strategic Plans, which were required to include cross -compliance mechanisms intended to protect peatlands and wetlands and other General Agricultural and Environmental Conditions (GAECs), and relevant elements of the Water Framework Directive and the Directive on the Sustainable Use of Pesticides.
Unfortunately, in 2024 initial evidence suggested that the overall climate and environmental ambition of these CAP Strategic Plans was insufficient to meet the goals and targets set out in the Farm to Fork and Biodiversity strategies or advance GHG emission reductions on a significant scale. Previous analysis by IEEP concluded that the reasons for this include: the lack of legally binding, agriculture and land use sector specific environmental targets; limitations of the monitoring and evaluation framework including gaps in indicators and data availability; political considerations at Member State and EU level; and insufficient motivation and capacity at a farm level.
Environmental “greening” measures under the previous CAP were found by the European Court of Auditors to have not made farming practices more environmentally friendly, principally due to them not being sufficiently targeted or stretching. Therefore, a key test for the 2023-2027 CAP will be whether the increased ambition and environmental obligations are sufficiently targeted and stretching to lead to meaningful changes on the ground. Whilst the enhanced GAECs and requirements for more funding to go to eco-schemes should improve outcomes relative to the previous CAP period, the effect of this will likely be weakened by the CAP Simplification proposals released in May 2025. Furthermore, the limited ambition to Strategic Plans, means such improvements will remain insufficient.
Of all the four parts of the UK, England has moved the furthest and fastest away from the CAP. In 2018 Defra set out ambitious proposals to transition away from area-based payments with limited cross compliance requirements; towards a model of “public money for public goods”, with funds based on specific actions, usually for environmental aims. The legislative framework for this transition is set out in the Agriculture Act 2020, but the transition from the historic system is still in process with full transition set to be complete by 2027.
Three types of Environmental Land Management Schemes (ELMS) have been developed in collaboration with stakeholders. The bulk of funding has been delivered through the Sustainable Farming Incentive (SFI), which pays farmers for specific, prescribed sustainable farming and land management actions. Countryside Stewardship (CS), which offers payments for more targeted, ambitious, and often longer-term environmental actions and Landscape Recovery (LR) which funds larger-scale, multiparty, long-term land use change projects, have received less funding.
SFI takes a “pick and mix” approach, with farmers choosing whichever actions they wish to apply to their farms. This is not only distinct from the EU’s approach, but also to the models being proposed elsewhere in the UK, all of which propose a basic/universal layer aimed at the majority of the farming community, with a set per hectare payment and set of actions and conditions. All ELMS are voluntary, and after 2027 there will be no universal payment that all scheme participants receive or universal set of actions they must take in return.
Conditionality
A condition of receipt of CAP payments in the EU was and remains adherence to Cross Compliance rules including the Good Agricultural and Environmental Conditions (GAECs). These continue to apply in Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland, but ceased to apply in England from January 2024. Although many statutory regulations remain, the change means reduced inspections and enforcement for environmental standards.
Budget & implementation issues
The implementation of ELMS has been far from smooth and beset by delays, changes to scheme details and budget changes. Take up was initially very low. After a significant increase in uptake, the SFI was abruptly halted to new applicants in March 2025, a move condemned by farmers and environmentalists alike. This was without warning and justified as a response to increased uptake and consequential budgetary constraints. With both CS and NR suffering from low budget allocation and delays in availability, many farmers found themselves without any ELM scheme to apply to. Defra has subsequently allowed those who had started, but not completed, an application when closure was announced to submit it and be eligible. However, others will need to wait until the Government has reviewed, and potentially redesigned, the scheme, which may not be until 2026.
Together with the phasing out of direct payments and the central role of ELMS in supporting agriculture, this lack of predictability over funds and resulting increased commercial pressure is arguably the most significant divergence from the CAP. Farmers were assured that the EU exit would not result in any loss in support for agriculture, only a change in the basis for receiving payment. ELMS represents a huge opportunity to support nature restoration and reward farmers for doing the right thing, and the design has reflected a more progressive approach than CAP. However, the future direction of the scheme is still unclear and for many farmers the volatility in funding levels and scheme design so far has contributed to an erosion of trust, Government will need to work hard to ensure that farmers do not lose faith in these environmental programmes.
Policy development in Northern Ireland (NI) has been slower and is heavily shaped by the unique context of the Windsor Framework (WF); the agricultural sector's very high dependence on direct payments (estimated at 83% of farm income pre-reform); extremely high levels of phosphorus and nitrogen pollution; and the frequent suspensions of the NI Assembly and Stormont Executive, most recently between 2022 and 2024.
The Sustainable Agriculture Programme, being introduced under the Climate Change Act (NI) 2022 includes multiple elements with the aim of improving environmental sustainability, increasing resilience and productivity and strengthening supply chains. The most significant elements are the Farm Sustainability Payment, which is a form of direct payment similar to the BPS and the Farming with Nature Package. The latter funds actions such as woodland planting, peatland management, agroforestry, and hedgerow planting and the Department of Agriculture, Environment and Rural Affairs (DAERA) has been conducting 'Test & Learn' pilots to inform scheme design.
A prerequisite for receiving Farm Sustainability and Farming with Nature payments is participation in the Soil Nutrient Health Scheme. This has been rolling out across different regions since 2022 and aims to test every field in Northern Ireland (estimated to be around 700,000) and deliver training to farmers on how to improve farm management based on the results. Whilst soil testing is a part of schemes elsewhere in the UK, Northern Ireland’s is the most ambitious and comprehensive. Meanwhile, whilst the EU plans to introduce soil testing requirements, plans are not yet fully developed.
The Soil Nutrient Health Scheme is being rolled out in a context of crisis levels of nutrient pollution in its waterways. Most notably Lough Neagh, the UK’s largest inland lake and source of 40% of NI’s drinking water, has been devasted by algal blooms and toxic blue-green algae. This is caused by high levels of phosphorus and nitrogen of which over 60% comes from agriculture.
As well as helping improve nutrient knowledge management at a farm level, the results of the Soil Nutrient Health Scheme will also inform a review of Northern Ireland’s Nutrient Actions Programme including potential restrictions on use of chemical fertilisers. These and other policies form part of the Lough Neagh Action Plan. It remains to be seen how effective this suit of policies will be at tackling NI nutrient pollution problems, but there is now substantial momentum behind these efforts.
The overall policy approach appears more similar to Wales and Scotland, than England, but as it is still in development it is difficult to assess either its environmental impact or divergence from the EU and elsewhere in the UK. What is notable is that since the resumption of Stormont in February 2024 there has been a substantial increase in environmental and agri-environmental policy development, with arguably significantly more ambition than previously seen.
Throughout its policy development, the Scottish Government has aimed for broad alignment with EU CAP objectives. However, in 2023 they undertook research into the effectiveness of CAP and concluded that to be effective, direct payments must be more targeted. The Agriculture and Rural Communities (Scotland) Act 2024 (ARC Act), retains a form of universal area-based payment similar to the CAP, albeit with increased conditionality attached. The ARC Act is still in the process of implementation, and secondary legislation will be laid before Parliament in 2026. In the meantime, Scottish Farmers continue to receive the majority of their financial support via direct payments under the legacy CAP Basic Payment Scheme.
Current proposals for the new scheme will consist of four tiers, which build on each other:
Tier 1: Base provides a foundational payment similar to BPS with the aim of supporting active farming and food production. GAECs are incorporated into the conditions of this Tier, with additional new requirements for farms on peatlands and wetlands, similar to the EU.
In addition, farmers need to complete a Whole Farm Plan, with carbon audits, soil analysis, and integrated pest management.
Tier 2: Enhanced is planned for 2026 and will include additional funds for enhanced environmental practices that build on Tier 1 requirements, with details still being developed. Whilst Tier 1 is comparable to EU area payments, Tier 2 has been compared to England’s SFI.
Tier 3: Elective will be based on Scotland’s current Agri-Environment Climate Scheme which includes funding for a comprehensive list of high-value environmental initiatives. Funding is competitive and offers five-year contracts.
Tier 4: Complimentary focuses on ongoing training and professional support.
It is difficult to assess the impact of Scotland’s transition or compare it to either the EU or England, given that it is still in the process of being developed. The incorporation of GAECs and Whole Farm Plan is positive, but the fact that a substantial proportion of funding will go to Tier 1, which are arguably less environmentally ambitious than England’s SFI, meaning that there may be less available for the most sustainable practices.
Initial proposals for the agricultural transition in Wales were first introduced in 2018 proposing agricultural support be delivered through two streams: public goods and economic resilience. The proposals have since been amended and developed over several years of consultation and what is now known as the Sustainable Farming Scheme (SFS) is still being finalised. Meanwhile, the Senedd (Welsh Parliament) passed the Agriculture (Wales) Act 2023, which provides the framework for the delivery of funds and other interventions.
The SFS proposals include a three-layer structure: a Universal layer with mandatory actions for a baseline payment; an Optional layer with voluntary actions for additional payments; and a Collaborative layer for farmers working together at scale across landscapes or supply chains.
The SFS was initially planned for introduction in 2025 with BPS payments phased out between 2025 and 2029. However, following substantial farmer protests in spring 2024, about various agricultural policies, but particularly the proposed requirement for farms in receipt of SFS payments to have at least 10% tree cover on their land, the transition was delayed by a year and proposals revisited. The obligations that farmers need to meet for the Universal Layer have been reduced, with farm level tree planting targets removed and biodiversity obligations reduced. As of May 2025, the final details of the Universal Layer scheme have not been published, and even less is known about plans for the optional and collaborative layers.
In the meantime, Welsh farmers continue to receive the majority of their financial support via the legacy Basic Payment Scheme (BPS).
Budget issues
Lack of certainty over the budget has been a major problem for both Welsh Government and stakeholders. With the weakening of the Universal layer, many hoped this could be counteracted with significant support for more ambitious measures in the optional and collaborative layers. However, concerns around a significantly reduced budget have dampened such hopes.
With a continuation of an area based Universal layer, proposals in Wales are arguably closer to the CAP than those in England, but not as close to it as Scotland’s. However, as policy is still in development and budget still uncertain, assessing the likely environmental outcomes is challenging.
Chemicals
Divergence Summary
It is through REACH and the restriction of harmful chemical substances that we see the most significant levels of divergence between the UK and EU with the latter going further to phase out, prevent and stop the use of chemicals that have serious negative health and environmental effects. The EU has also gone further by tightening up rules around the classification, labelling and packaging of chemicals too.
Yet, though REACH is perhaps the most well-known piece of legislation in regulating chemicals, other changes have been taking place too since Brexit with a bearing on divergence in UK/EU chemicals policy.
As many of the products that we buy, sell and use contain chemicals, it is worth noting that changes to EU’s Ecodesign framework also has relevance as the EU will be considering how to address the presence of hazardous chemicals in those products and how effectively for example they can be recycled, repaired and/or reused. The Product Regulation and Metrology Bill, when enacted would be a tool for aligning environmental product standards in Great Britain with those from the EU but legislative divergence in tackling chemicals in products has already begun. Changes to the Urban Wastewater Treatment Directive and Industrial Emissions Directive are significant in relation to tackling chemical pollution too and represent legislative divergence.
The absence of a post-Brexit UK Chemicals Strategy has been disappointing, as has been the slow and unambitious nature of the approach to the registration and restriction of individual chemicals under the UK REACH regime. Yet, this has not prevented some, IEEP UK included, to call for a UK wide Chemicals Agency to tackle the life-cycle nature of the chemicals threat as well as a dedicated Chemicals Act.
Neatly coinciding with Brexit in late 2020, the EU published a new Chemicals Sustainability Strategy and indicated that a revision to EU REACH, its flagship policy, would take place. However, this has not happened amidst pushback from various industry interests and indeed in early 2025 a ‘strategic dialogue’ on the future of the EU’s chemical industry was initiated as part of the EU’s wider drive to ease the burden of regulation.
Yet this has not stopped EU REACH from going forward in restricting harmful chemical substances. Since Brexit, the European Chemicals Agency has adopted thirteen restrictions, some of which are significant and consequential, such as intentionally added microplastics and formaldehyde, whilst a further 11 substance restrictions have been initiated, meaning that files have been opened with a view to possible restriction in the near future. Similarly, ECHA has added 38 ‘Substances of Very High Concern’ (SVHC) since Brexit to its list of candidate list meaning enhanced measures are required on companies providing such chemicals. In contrast, the UK has not added any.
In late 2024 the EU revised the Classification, Labelling and Packaging Regulation, another key part of the chemicals policy framework. As the name suggests this is significant because it strengthens measures around how chemicals are sold through online marketplaces for example, that products should have clearer labelling (and introducing digital labelling) and that online advertisements will have to contain information on the hazards in a way as to make it easier for consumers to understand and make sustainable choices. This regulation builds on an earlier 2008 Classification, Labelling and Packaging Regulation in which the UK implemented and so highlights a clear form of legislative divergence.
Though REACH is perhaps the most well-known piece of legislation in regulating chemicals, other changes have been taking place too since Brexit with a bearing on divergence in EU/UK chemicals policy.
As many of the products that we buy, sell and use contain chemicals, it is worth noting that changes to EU’s Ecodesign framework also has relevance as the EU will be considering how to address the presence of hazardous chemicals in those products and how effectively for example they can be recycled, repaired and/or reused. The passing of the revised 2024 Urban Wastewater Treatment Directive (detailed in the Water section of this report) is significant as cosmetics and pharmaceuticals producers will have to pay a part of the costs of damage caused to the water environment. And similarly, chemical pollution is addressed through the revision of the 2024 Industrial Emissions Directive. These revised laws represent a form of passive, or ‘divergence by default’ whereby the UK has chosen not to keep pace with developments in the EU.
Before Brexit had even fully taken place, the UK government committed under Prime Minister Theresa May to producing a Chemicals Strategy to ‘manage the risks…and promote their safe production, transport and use’ of chemicals post-Brexit. Since then, the threat of Per- and Polyfluoroalkyl Substances (PFAS) has also come to wider attention. And yet, this strategy has not materialised. A year after the formation of a new UK Government and many of the same questions are being asked which only underscore the absence of progress in chemicals policy.
A particularly significant change occurred after Brexit with the UK withdrawing from EU REACH (Registration, Evaluation, Authorisation and restriction of Chemicals) and establishing an indigenous alternative called UK REACH. This is, in itself a classic example of regulatory divergence, the significance of which is mostly through the reduced capacity that the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) who administers UK REACH has compared to the European Chemicals Agency (ECHA) who administers EU REACH. This has become more apparent over time as data and information gathered by CHEM Trust shows.
Since leaving the EU, the HSE through UK REACH has not adopted any restrictions of harmful chemical substances (compared to 13 by the EU in the same time period), has initiated three restrictions – on lead ammunition, PFAS in firefighting foams and harmful substances in tattoo ink respectively, (none of which are yet in force and the latter does not appear to be as robust as it’s EU equivalent), compared with 11 on the EU side. It is a similar story with regard to managing ‘Substances of Very High Concern’ – the EU has placed 38 ‘Substances of Very High Concern’ (SVHC) on its candidate list whilst the UK has not added any.
Confusingly, ‘UK’ REACH only applies to Great Britain – England, Scotland and Wales. Northern Ireland continues to apply EU REACH following rules set under the Northern Ireland Protocol / Windsor Framework.
Circular Economy and Waste
Divergence Summary
In contrast to other policy themes covered in this report, circular economy and waste is a prominent example of how much divergence in policy and legislation can take place in only five years.
The UK, in broad terms, has been passively diverging from the EU on circular economy policy and has failed to keep pace with new legislative developments in the EU. Despite some promising developments in the UK, rhetoric from successive governments has not matched the urgency and seriousness that the EU appear to have shown this policy area. Though measures taken by the EU may not go far enough for some, they only serve to highlight the stasis, particularly in England, that has existed in waste and circular economy policy since Brexit.
Changes for example to ecodesign-related rules are particularly significant and consequential, as the EU has opted to expand the coverage of ecodesign legislation that both the EU and UK shared before Brexit to cover non-energy related products. If the UK does not align with these stricter rules, it runs the risk of becoming a potential dumping ground for sub-standard products that do not meet EU requirements. A programme staffed by technical experts has now been convened by the EU member states to implement new ecodesign laws and this adds pressure on the UK to consider whether it will conform to higher standards set by the EU. Likewise, the UK has not matched the EU’s suite of legislation on areas such as product repair, product liability and green claims.
Where the UK shares the EU’s broad concerns about securing critical raw materials for the technologies of the future, the UK has not matched the EU’s example by putting in place legislation to mandate improvements in the efficiency, recyclability and resource content of batteries, or on how to secure those CRM themselves. Instead, the UK has favoured a non-binding, non-legislative approach by introducing a policy strategy documents instead which lack the ‘bite’ that a legislative approach has.
In tackling the scourge of single-use plastics, the UK is broadly aligned with EU legislation, though Wales and NI (once it completes implementation of the EU’s Single-use Plastics Directive) have additionally followed the EU in moving to ban oxo-degradable plastics, a particularly troublesome and damaging form of plastic pollution to humans and the environment. However, looking ahead, the EU’s aim to tackle pollution from plastic pellets appears to indicate that further divergence in policy and legislation will take place.
Waste and circular economy has been a focus of EU environmental policy in recent years, and a plethora of legislation has been enacted in this area guided by overarching strategic plans such as the 2020 Circular Economy Action Plan, which forms part of the wider European Green Deal. Since the UK’s exit from the EU, this has included new and updated regulations and directives across ecodesign, sustainable products, textile and food waste, batteries, critical raw materials, plastics, packaging, and persistent organic pollutants (POPs).
Within ecodesign, EU policymaking has been particularly progressive. The 2024 Ecodesign for Sustainable Products Regulation (ESPR) 2023 Commission Regulation on Ecodesign requirements for smartphones, mobile phones other than smartphones, cordless phones have been the most important recent regulatory advances in this area. The ESPR replaced and extended the Ecodesign Directive 2009 by expanding its scope to cover virtually all physical products, rather than only energy-related goods, and seeks to increase product sustainability in the EU by increasing their circularity, energy efficiency, recyclability, durability and recycled content.
Running alongside its progress on ecodesign, the EU has also put in place regulatory measures aiming to further promote sustainability in the products we buy, sell and use. These have included the 2024 Directive on Repair of Goods, which requires the manufacturers of products such as fridges and smartphones that are subject to reparability requirements under EU law to repair these products for a reasonable price and within a reasonable time period; the 2024 Product Liability Directive, which ensures that third parties are held liable for any product repairs, modifications and upgrades that they have made; and the 2024 Directive on empowering consumers for the green transition, which seeks to improve consumer information on product durability and repairability before any purchase, and prevent vague and unsubstantiated environmental claims and unreliable voluntary sustainability logos. A proposed Green Claims Directive (GCD) would have gone further in seeking to protect consumers from greenwashing by ensuring that any claims made relating to a product’s green credentials by a business are reliable, comparable and verifiable, but is set to be withdrawn by the European Commission after Italy withdrew its support.
In an effort to reduce textile and food waste, the European Parliament and the Council reached an agreement in February 2025 on revisions to the EU’s Waste Framework Directive (WFD). This legislation sets out an Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) Scheme for textiles, which provides an incentive for manufacturers to produce longer-lasting products by charging them a fee to cover the costs of textile waste management. The revised WFD builds on the intentions set out in the Strategy for Sustainable and Circular Textiles but does not contain specific targets for carbon and water footprint reductions within the textile supply chain. For food waste, the revised directive outlines Member State reduction targets of 10% for manufacturers and processers and 30% for retail, restaurants, food services and households by 2030. It comes under the umbrella of the EU’s Farm to Fork Strategy, though has faced criticism for not going far enough in meeting the commitment made within the Strategy of cutting per capita food waste by 50% over the same period.
An upgrade to an earlier directive which the UK had implemented whilst being a member of the EU, the 2023 Batteries Regulation introduces more stringent end-of-life management, including targets for recycling efficiency, recycled content and material recovery and the prohibition of sending batteries to landfill. It also aims to increase manufacturer transparency on battery composition, recyclability and recycled content by imposing new digital battery passports.
The EU has strengthened its approach in securing critical raw materials (CRM) necessary for the green transition – particularly for electric vehicle batteries – and more widely in critical sectors such as defence by passing the 2024 Critical Raw Materials Act. This Act, actually a Regulation, includes a target for at least 25% of the EU’s annual consumption of critical materials to come from recycled sources, and measures requiring member states and private operators to investigate the potential for recovering critical raw material from extractive waste and setting requirements on recyclability and recycled content of permanent magnets. This is supported by a nonbinding 2023 Recommendation on improving the rate of return of used and waste mobile phones, tablets and laptops which looks to improve the collection and recycling rates of these goods.
A Single-Use Plastics Directive has banned 10 common single-use plastic items from the EU market, including cotton bud sticks, cutlery, food containers and cups – where sustainable alternatives are easily available and affordable – and all oxo-degradable plastics. Additionally, in April 2025 the Council and Parliament reached a provisional agreement on a new regulation on preventing plastic pellet losses to reduce microplastic pollution which introduces a new risk management framework to minimise losses of these pellets to the environment throughout the value chain.
The Packaging and Packaging Waste Regulation (PPWR) sets binding re-use targets, requires producers to minimise packaging, restricts single-use packaging for certain products, and bans packaging containing Perfluoroalkyl and Polyfluoroalkyl Substances (PFAS) above a certain threshold. The Regulation also set out a requirement for Member States to introduce mandatory deposit return schemes for plastic bottles and aluminium cans by 2029.
Waste and circular economy are both, for the most part, devolved policy competencies in the UK. As such, the level of divergence from EU policy varies across the four UK administrations, though some aspects of this area – such as critical raw materials – fall under reserved powers.
The publication of a 2018 Waste and Resources Strategy for England included commitments to matching and in some cases exceeding EU standards and targets within waste and circular economy policy areas, but despite some legislative development (as outlined below), progress towards these aims has generally been slow. The establishment of a Circular Economy Taskforce in November 2024 which is tasked with supporting the UK government’s development of a circular economy strategy for England, with its publication slated for Autumn 2025, may be a sign of renewed impetus in this area.
Despite a commitment in England’s 2018 Waste and Resources Strategy to ‘match or where economically practicable exceed the ambition of the EU’s Ecodesign standards’, there has been little change to law and policy relating to ecodesign since 2010. The UK Product Regulation and Metrology Bill, which is currently undergoing Parliamentary scrutiny, is considered by some as a possible tool for aligning environmental product standards in Great Britain with those from the EU.
A sustainable products consultation held in 2021 as part of the review of the waste prevention programme for England found support for prioritisation of repair [of products] as well as improved customer information to protect against greenwashing, but its findings have not led to any new legislation. However, a more progressive move has been made by banning single-use vapes from 1 June 2025 under The Environmental Protection (Single-use Vapes) (England) Regulations 2024.
Approaches to tackling textile and food waste in England have largely revolved around voluntary measures. WRAP’s Textiles 2030 aims to reduce carbon and water footprint within the textile supply chain by 50% and 30% respectively by 2030. There are no mandatory targets for reduction in food waste in England, and a government consultation to introduce such targets promised in the 2018 Resources and Waste Strategy have not taken place. Legislative progress has been limited to The Separation of Waste (England) Regulations 2025, which will require all workplaces in England to separate food waste. This is augmented by voluntary initiatives and targets such as WRAP’s UK Food and Drink Pact, which contains an SDG-aligned aim to reduce per capita food waste by 50%.
The UK Government published a Battery Strategy in November 2023 to build on earlier legislation, which includes ambitions to increase supply chain sustainability and resilience, explore international cooperation, and ensure that the sector ‘develops practical, widely adopted international standards’. However, these ambitions have not been accompanied by legislation.
Similarly, England’s approach to securing critical raw materials, vital for technologies of the future as well as ubiquitous items like mobile phones and electric vehicle batteries has been guided by the creation of a UK Critical Minerals Strategy published in 2022 (with a 2023 ‘refresh’), though legislative measures have not been introduced in tandem with this new strategy, nor does it introduce numerical targets for circularity within the CRM supply chain, unlike the EU’s CRM law.
England has moved to limit or ban single-use plastics, with straws, cotton bud sticks, and beverage stirrers all prohibited as of October 2020. There were further measures in October 2023, when bans on single-use plastic cutlery, balloon sticks and polystyrene cups and food containers, and restrictions on single-use plastic plates, trays and bowls were also introduced. A Deposit Return Scheme for plastic and metal drinks containers is expected to be implemented in October 2027.
England introduced an Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) scheme for packaging in 2025, which obliges producers to bear the costs of managing household packaging waste, ensure a proportion of the packing they supply is recycled, and inform the public about the correct method of disposal. While a positive step, the packaging EPR is less ambitious than the EU’s PPWR, for example given that it does not it does not set legally binding targets for packaging waste reduction.
In Northern Ireland (NI), the Circular Economy and Miscellaneous Provisions Act 2022 required the NI Executive to publish a circular economy strategy, however this has not yet been finalised. A consultation on a draft version of the document was conducted in early 2023, in part a result of the Executive not being in operation for an extended period, which caused delays to policymaking in general. The NI Executive’s Programme for Government published in February 2025 contains a new commitment to publishing this strategy within the government’s current term.
Certain aspects of circular economy policy in NI fall under Annex 2 of the Northern Ireland Protocol and as such are aligned with the EU. For example, NI is required to transpose various articles from the EU’s 2019 Single-use Plastics Directive, including the bans on single-use plastic cotton bud sticks, cutlery, plates, stirrers, straws, balloon sticks, food and beverage containers, and oxo-degradable plastics. This is expected to be implemented by the end of 2025. Additionally, the EU’s 2023 Batteries Regulation falls under the Protocol and thus is applicable to NI, which is in the process of gradually implementing it over the next ten years.
Various other areas of circular economy policy are not covered by the Protocol, and in many of these areas, NI mirrors the rest of the UK. This includes NI joining the rest of the UK in banning single-use vapes from 1 June 2025, the NI Executive’s introduction of an EPR scheme for packaging in 2025, NI joining England and Scotland in the new Deposit Return Scheme planned to enter into force in October 2027, and NI being covered by the UK’s Critical Mineral Strategy. NI has not yet developed a strategy to reduce food and textile waste, though it is part of UK-wide voluntary textile and food waste reduction measures, as outlined in the England Policy Developments section above.
Ecodesign legislation in NI is limited to The Ecodesign for Energy-Related Products Regulations 2010. However, parts of the EU’s ESPR are likely to fall under the Protocol and as such NI manufacturers may need to apply any new ecodesign requirements to non-energy-related products that fall under the scope of the regulation.
Much of Scotland’s policy approach to circular economy and waste is outlined within the Circular Economy Route Map published by the Scottish Government in December 2024. The subsequent publication of such a full Circular Economy Strategy in 2026 is a requirement of the Circular Economy (Scotland) Act 2024. Scotland should be applauded for its legislative progress and for being the first UK administration to pass a circular economy act.
In promoting the more sustainable design of products, ecodesign, the Circular Economy (Scotland) Act 2024 requires the forthcoming Circular Economy Strategy to consider it economically desirable that ‘goods, products and materials are designed so as to reduce their consumption and whole life-cycle carbon emissions’, suggesting a wider ecodesign focus –extending beyond only energy-related products – in future.
Measures to reduce textile and food waste are currently overwhelmingly voluntary (see England Policy Developments section for details on UK-wide voluntary measures), and no new legislation has been introduced in these areas since EU exit. The new Circular Economy Strategy, however, makes repeated suggestions that Scotland will look to align with EU policy in these areas in future. Scotland has not yet set targets in this area, though waste reduction targets are required under the Circular Economy Act.
In other areas of circular economy, Scotland is aiming for broadly the same policy objectives as England. Scotland has also moved to ban single-use vapes from 1 June 2025 under The Environmental Protection (Single-use Vapes) (Scotland) Regulations 2024. Scotland is also now aligned with England regarding the introduction of a Deposit Return scheme for plastic and metal drinks containers in October 2027, after initially wanting to implement such a scheme in 2023, but being blocked by the demands of the UK’s 2020 Internal Market Act. Additionally, The Scottish Government introduced an EPR scheme for packaging in 2025 alongside England, as required by the Environment Act 2021 and Packaging Regulations 2024.
Similarly to England, Scotland’s policy approach for batteries is limited to The Waste Batteries (Scotland) Regulations 2009, which implemented the EU’s Battery Directive 2006. Since EU exit, only the 2023 UK-wide Battery Strategy has been published in this area, and no accompanying legislation. Falling under reserved powers, the UK’s Critical Mineral Strategy also applies to Scotland.
Scotland’s ban on single-use plastics under The Environmental Protection (Single-use Plastic Products) (Scotland) Regulations 2021 was developed to mirror the restrictions introduced by the EU, thereby encompassing plastic drink stirrers, cotton bud sticks, straws, plates, cutlery, balloon sticks, and food and drink containers. However, Scotland has not followed the EU’s lead in banning oxo-degradable plastics.
In 2021, Wales published its ambitious circular economy strategy, ‘Beyond Recycling’, which sets clear waste and circular economy targets. Its recycling rates are the highest in the UK and rank second globally, behind only Austria.
As is the case for England and Scotland, Welsh legislation within ecodesign is limited to The Ecodesign for Energy-Related Products Regulations 2010 and does not address non-energy-related products. However, the Welsh circular economy strategy contains commitments to incentivise ecodesign, including through the Circular Economy Fund (2019-2022) and presently through Flexible Innovation Support funding.
Legislation tackling food and textile waste in Wales includes The Waste Separation Requirements (Wales) Regulations 2023, which mandates that all Welsh businesses that produce over 5kg of food waste per week must separate this, as well as unsold textiles, for collection. The Welsh circular economy strategy outlines targets to halve avoidable food waste by 2025 and cut it by 60% by 2030, with a view to being a zero-waste nation by 2050. However, these targets are not legally binding. Wales is also part of UK-wide voluntary textile and food waste reduction measures, as outlined in the England Policy Developments section above.
Regarding single-use plastics, Wales took the same approach as Scotland in following the EU’s lead in restrictions and bans through The Environmental Protection (Single-use Plastic Products) (Wales) Act 2023. Phase 1 of the ban included single-use plastic plates, cutlery, drinks stirrers, food containers, balloon sticks, cotton bud sticks and straws. In 2026, Wales will further extend the ban to cover plastic carrier bags, polystyrene lids, and oxo-degradable plastics, going further than Scotland in this area and leading the way amongst the four UK administrations. Wales will not be joining the Deposit Return Scheme slated to launch in the rest of the UK in 2027, instead preferring to launch its own version additionally including glass drinks containers at a later date.
In other areas of circular economy policy, Wales has aimed for similar policy objectives to England and Scotland, including banning single-use vapes from 1 June 2025 under The Environmental Protection (Single-use Vapes) (Wales) Regulations 2024. As in England, the Welsh policy approach for batteries is currently limited to the Waste Batteries and Accumulators Regulations 2009. The UK’s Critical Mineral Strategy also applies to Wales. Alongside the rest of the UK, the Welsh Government introduced an EPR scheme for packaging in 2025.
Climate
Divergence Summary
Whilst the UK and EU share the overall 2050 net zero target, both are beginning to employ somewhat different approaches in how to get there. Since the UK’s departure from the EU, the European Union has been active in creating new climate change related law; either by producing wholly new law that the UK has not been a party to (such as the Social Climate Fund), or amending (and usually tightening up) existing laws that the UK had helped to shape and which it had implemented when it was a member (examples include the Energy Efficiency Directive and the Renewable Energy Directive).
The EU has legislated to tackle methane emissions, a particularly potent greenhouse gas and developed further its emissions trading scheme by widening its scope. The UK on the other hand has (re-)established its 2030 target date for the phase out of the internal combustion engine compared with the EU’s 2035 and has gone further and faster in deploying renewable energy technologies (over and above the EU average).
Taken together, changes to climate related policy represents one of the most significant areas of divergence between the EU and UK post Brexit, despite the same broad, long-term goal of reaching net zero by 2050. Most of the changes also represent a ‘divergence by default’ (or passive divergence) whereby the EU has legislated and the UK has chosen not to replicate or keep pace with what the EU is doing.
However, it should be recognised that emissions are falling and have fallen significantly in both the UK and EU since 1990 (and since Brexit). This has been driven largely by changes in the energy sector. The growth in the deployment of renewables has increased dramatically in this period and has often replaced dirtier fossil fuels like coal and to a lesser extent oil and gas. Future (and further) emissions reductions for the UK as well as the EU will need to come from other challenging and far harder sectors to decarbonise such as around heating, transport, and the land use and agriculture sectors.
It remains to be seen whether recent changes to EU law, once they are fully implemented, will mean that the EU reaches its net zero target more quickly and efficiently (and perhaps at lower cost) than the UK.
Finally, on intra-UK divergence, though each of the four nations share the same long-term goal of net zero there are some differences. The establishment of Just Transition bodies to monitor and advise Government on how to ‘cushion’ the effect of societal changes caused as a result of the shift from a fossil fuel-based economy to net zero, features in all but England. In Scotland, despite recently switching from annual based climate targets to a 5 yearly carbon budget approach as adopted in the three other nations, still retains a 2045 target to reach net zero, five years ahead of the other nations. However, Climate Change Committee assessments point to the need for timely implementation of climate change plans to ensure net zero goals are reached – something that is common for all four nations.
The EU’s broad, long-term goal of reaching net zero by 2050 remains the same as the UK’s; however, its intermediate headline target of reducing emissions by at least 55% by 2030, compared to 1990 levels is less stretching than the UK’s target (68% by 2030). The European Commission has announced though that the 2030 climate and energy plans (see Commission Communication on National Energy and Climate Plans) indicate that collectively the EU is very close to achieving the 55% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions despite doubts being expressed by onlookers.
The EU’s route from the 2030 target to the 2050 target is somewhat uncertain, however. The European Commission’s recommendation to reduce emissions by 90% by 2040 has been met with backlash - while some Member States support it, others have raised concerns about its impact on industrial competitiveness especially in the wake of tariffs imposed by the United States. In response, the Commission has reportedly been considering measures to increase flexibility, such as allowing international carbon credits or carbon removal to be counted in emissions reductions targets. Amidst these deliberations, the EU have delayed the 2040 climate target proposal and missed the deadline to deliver their 2035 Nationally Determined Contribution Target (which would be linked to the 2040 target).
Nonetheless, and despite this wider context, the EU has successfully managed to pass several key pieces of legislation since the UK’s departure, mainly through the ‘fit for 55’ package aimed at meeting the 2030 interim target9. Regarding energy, the revised EU Renewable Energy Directive aims for renewables to account for 42.5% of the EU’s energy consumption by 2030 (the previous target was 32%), with an ambition to reach 45%. It targets sectors such as transport, buildings and industry where the uptake of renewables has been slower. The EU has also revised its Energy Efficiency Directive, introducing a new binding target to reduce the EU’s final energy consumption by 11.7% by 2030 with Member States required to set national contributions, and increases annual energy savings from 2024-2030 by an average of 1.49% per year. Other changes include measures to reduce energy consumption in the public sector and requiring Member States to prioritise vulnerable households. The UK on the other hand has stated an ambition to reduce energy demand by a more ambitious 15% by 2030, although unlike the EU it has not stipulated this in legislation.
Further divergence comes from the revised Energy Performance of Buildings Directive which is aimed at achieving a fully decarbonised building stock by 2050. It also sets a 2030 target to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in the buildings sector by at least 60% compared to 2015. The UK has not adopted these changes and still follows the previous iteration of the Directive. The EU is reportedly considering revising its energy policy to support struggling businesses, and a 2021 proposed revision of the Energy Taxation Directive, which would see fuels being taxed based on their environmental performance and energy content instead of volume, is still under debate due to concerns about higher fuel prices.
The EU’s revised 2024 Methane Regulation requires the fossil gas, oil and coal sectors to measure, monitor, report and verify their methane emissions, and take action to reduce them. It also progressively implements stricter requirements on imported fossil fuels with the ambition that they will eventually be subject to the same monitoring, reporting and verification as providers inside the EU.
The EU has amended the Regulation on CO2 Emissions for new Cars and Vans, which will ban the sale of new petrol and diesel cars from 2035, although the EU has been introducing greater flexibility on the 2025-2027 reduction targets within this Regulation in response to backlash from industry and parties in the European Parliament.
Finally, and perhaps of most significance, the EU has expanded the scope of the Emissions Trading System (ETS), to the maritime sector covering emissions from large ships entering EU ports regardless of where they come from or whose flag they fly. On aviation, the process of reducing ETS allowances for the aviation sector is well underway with no free allowances to be given from 2026 onwards. The geographical restriction of the ETS to intra-EEA flights will continue however until at least the start of 2027. Furthermore, the EU has also put in place a new ETS 2 system which will cover additional sectors including fuel combustion in buildings and road transport and will start in earnest from 2027. Revenue from ETS 2 will be directed towards a new Social Climate Fund, designed to assist emissions reductions and energy efficiency improvements. To mitigate against the risk of carbon leakage, the EU also introduced a new Regulation on a Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM) in 2023. This aims to capture 50% of emissions covered by the ETS and applies to several carbon intensive industries (see table 1 in the full PDF report). As of now, these developments represent a significant divergence from the UK ETS, which does not currently cover these new sectors or have a fund designed to transfer ETS revenue, although it has introduced its own CBAM scheme. However, as explained below, the ‘UK-EU Reset’ talks in May 2025 indicated some further desire towards linking age of their respective ETS and CBAM schemes.
Despite the UK having a more ambitious target of reducing emissions (by 68% by 2030 compared to 1990 levels) than the overall EU target (55% by 2030 compared to 1990 levels), the Climate Change Committee (CCC) have reported that there has been insufficient progress to achieve 2030 target citing (in particular the last Government’s) backtracking on policy, delays and a slowing down of key policy measures such as the phase-out dates for fossil-fuel vehicles. Despite this, the CCC were at pains to stress that the UK had met all of its Carbon Budgets to date, including the third and most recent one (2018-2022), and that emissions are now less than half of 1990 levels. However much of this is due to the decline of coal and the increase in renewables whereas emission reduction efforts in other areas such as transport, agriculture and land use, buildings have been harder to achieve.
Nevertheless, the UK has submitted its Nationally Determined Contribution by the deadline, with an ambitious new target to reduce emissions to 81% below 1990 levels by 2035. It is also worth noting that Scotland has a target to reach Net Zero by 2045, five years ahead of the other UK nations and the UK as a whole.
In 2024, the incoming Labour government announced new policy to support the transition to net zero, including the Great British Energy Bill, passed by Parliament in May 2025, which aims to create a publicly owned company to assist and support investment in clean energy. Furthermore, the Clean Power 2030 Action Plan commits the UK to delivering clean power by 2030. While the target under this Plan for clean sources to produce at least as much power as the UK’s consumption by 2030 is arguably more ambitious than the EU’s target under the Renewable Energy Directive, it should be noted that the definition of ‘clean power’ includes nuclear energy and low carbon technologies such as gas with carbon capture and storage as well as renewables.
The EU passed, in 2024, a new law to tackle methane emissions opening up new legislative divergence with the UK. A House of Lords Committee on Environment and Climate Change published a report in December 2024 urging the UK to build on efforts made at COP26 in Glasgow in 2021 and develop a national methane action plan. The Committee did however recognise that the UK has a strong track record of reducing methane emissions generally (a 62% reduction from 1990 to 2020) but that further action to tackle the more challenging emissions that remain is needed including further possible regulation.
The UK Government has recently confirmed that the ban on the sale of new petrol and diesel cars will be brought forward from 2035 to 2030, reversing the previous Government’s delay to this headline phase out date. Changes to the Zero Emission Vehicle Mandate have also been made. Similar to EU developments, the updated mandate also introduces greater flexibility on the phase out of petrol and diesel cars, such as allowing hybrid cars to be sold until 2035, in response to concerns from industry.
Despite some differences, broadly speaking there has been legislative and policy alignment since Brexit between the EU and UK’s respective Emissions Trading Scheme systems and Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism policy. At the UK-EU ‘Reset’ summit on the 19 May 2025, both sides agreed that it would work together to formally link the ETS and CBAM systems. Since Brexit, the UK’s carbon price has been consistently lower than its EU equivalent. For the UK side, establishing its own CBAM in 2023 and now desiring the linking of ETS and CBAMs, is in part motivated by a desire to avoid UK businesses being levied the cost of fees based on a UK carbon price that is substantially lower than the EU’s.
Though there is broad alignment in ETS policy, there are some differences. The UK has consulted on expanding its ETS system to apply to emissions from the maritime sector (as well as recognise non-pipeline transport methods for transferring captured carbon to geological storage) but it has not yet formally made this change, unlike the EU. Neither has the UK introduced changes as the EU has done under ETS 2 though both the EU and UK have adopted broadly the same position on aviation, namely the winding down of free allocation of allowances, inclusion of flights in the European Economic Area but exclusion of non-EEA, international flights.
Furthermore, some tensions remain regarding whether the EU or the UK’s CBAM would apply to Northern Ireland, which is currently only subject to the EU ETS for electricity. If the UK CBAM applies in Northern Ireland, it could be used as a route for UK goods to enter the EU without paying the CBAM tariff. However, attempts to impose the EU’s CBAM in Northern Ireland may be challenged by the UK due to the trade frictions it would cause between Great Britain and Northern Ireland. These concerns may be rendered moot should there be a successful conclusion to linking ETS and CBAM systems.
Northern Ireland’s 2022 Climate Change Act enshrined into law the target of reaching net zero by 2050, with an interim target of a 48% emission reduction by 2030. The Act requires Norther Ireland to set five-year carbon budgets too though it includes sectoral targets (for energy, industrial processes, transport, infrastructure, waste management, agriculture and fisheries) which is slightly different than the other UK nations. These sectoral plans must also support the Just Transition Commission for Northern Ireland, another key feature of the Act.
Scotland had previously set ambitious annual and interim targets, including a target of reducing emissions by 75% by 2030 under the Climate Change (Scotland) Act 2009. However, Scotland’s ability to reach these targets had been increasingly called into question, with annual climate targets having been missed in 9 of 13 years. In 2024, the Scottish Parliament passed the Climate Change (Emissions Reduction Targets) (Scotland) Act to remove these annual targets as well as the 2030 and 2040 interim targets and instead adopt the five-year system of carbon budgets that other UK nations have adopted. Scotland’s first carbon budgets are expected soon, with the CCC highlighting that if their proposed budgets are adopted, Scotland will have a credible pathway to reaching net zero by 2045. Scotland already has its own Just Transition Commission which was established in 2019.
Wales has been setting its own 5 yearly carbon budgets since the 2016 Environment (Wales) Act however subsequently amended its net zero target (from an 80% reduction to 100% reduction) through The Environment (Wales) Act 2016 (Amendment of 2050 Emissions Target) Regulations 2021. Wales also held a consultation on a Just Transition Framework from 2023-2024, although no legislative developments have emerged at the time of writing.
Marine
Divergence Summary
Marine is an area of environmental policy in which the UK has, for the most part, used its post-Exit freedoms to actively diverge from the EU and move faster in implementing progressive, pro-conservation measures. While the EU has notably stalled in its efforts to ban bottom trawling in its MPAs, England has moved to fully ban this practice in four MPAs, with partial bans in another 13 areas, and the potential for a full ban in an additional 41 MPAs after the consultation announcement in June 2025. Northern Ireland has also put bans into place. While this progress does not go far enough in the pursuit of international biodiversity targets – nor in meeting the often-criticised MPA targets for England set under the Environment Act 2021 – it is a welcome start. To ensure that these areas are not just ‘paper parks’, the UK Government must work to put robust management and enforcement measures into place to generate the positive outcomes for nature conservation promised by these changes.
The ruling of the Sandeels Tribunal is an excellent example of the UK and EU’s differing approaches to fisheries management since 2020. The case brought by the EU was a clear demonstration of the tension between the UK’s focus on independence in fisheries management against the EU’s insistence on collaborative governance under the TCA, exemplifying a major area of divergence in managing joint fish stocks since EU Exit.
There is also notable intra-UK divergence within marine policy. Fisheries management and marine conservation, including the designation of MPAs, within territorial waters are devolved matters in the UK, and consequently the four administrations have moved at different speeds. England and Northern Ireland have moved more quickly than Scotland and Wales in their implementation of a limited number of bottom trawling bans. However, once again, monitoring and enforcement will be crucial in determining if this divergence is limited to legislation instead of outcomes for nature conservation.
The EU’s approach to marine conservation since the UK’s Exit is outlined in its 2023 Marine Action Plan, which seeks to align fisheries policy more closely with the EU’s overarching biodiversity goals and reiterates the need for Member States to comply with existing responsibilities under the 1992 Habitats Directive. To this end, the plan includes a commitment to ban bottom trawling in marine protected areas (MPAs) by 2030. However, the EU has been slow to act on this goal, owing primarily to a lack of political will within individual Member States; not a single EU country yet has a comprehensive plan to phase out bottom trawling in their MPAs, though some, such as Sweden, have signalled their intention to take further action.
Moving towards a full ban on this environmentally destructive practice in MPAs will be critical in meeting the bloc’s responsibilities and targets under both the EU Biodiversity Strategy for 2030 and the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework. Environmentally destructive bottom trawling continues to be widespread across the EU’s marine Natura 2000 protected areas, with research published in 2025 finding that it is still taking place in 77% of France’s, 85% of Germany’s and 44% of Italy’s sites4. This comes despite the legal protections afforded to these Natura 2000 sites under the 1992 Habitats Directive, which have been poorly enforced. A lack of use of infringement procedures by the European Commission has led NGOs to take some Member States to court for these violations.
The Marine Action Plan also reaffirmed the EU’s commitment to managing fish stocks at Maximum Sustainable Yield (MSY) levels6, which it had previously committed to achieving by 2020 under the Common Fisheries Policy (CFP). This opens up potential divergence with the UK given the latter’s non-binding commitment to fishing at or below MSY levels in the Fisheries Act 2020, which has been criticised for opening the door to overfishing.
The EU published an offshore renewable energy strategy in 2020, containing a target to increase offshore renewable energy capacity by 60 GW by 2030, a target which was then increased in 2023 to 111 GW by 203011, of which the majority is expected to be offshore wind. This scale-up of ambition will be met using coordination and collaboration mechanisms such as the North Seas Energy Cooperation group of countries and cross-border grid planning to integrate the efforts of different Member States in shared seas.
The EU and UK are both signatories of the UN’s High Seas Treaty, which aims to improve the ‘conservation and sustainable use of marine biological diversity of areas beyond national jurisdiction’. The EU ratified this treaty in May 2025, with the UK announcing that it had started its own process of ratification in June 2025. Additionally, both the EU and UK have called for a moratorium on deep-sea mining in international waters.
Since Brexit, the UK has used its new powers under the Fisheries Act 2020 to actively diverge from the EU in many areas of marine policy. In January 2024, the UK and Scottish Governments announced that English waters in the North Sea and all Scottish waters would be closed to all vessels closure that came into force in March of the same year.
The UK Government stated that the closure was motivated by environmental factors, specifically declining sandeel populations and resulting reductions in the breeding success of various species of seabirds, and was an ecosystem-based management measure to support the delivery of Good Environmental Status (GES). GES and its 15 associated indicators form part of the EU’s 2008 Marine Strategy Framework Directive and have been retained in the UK after Brexit through the UK Marine Strategy.
Under the terms of the UK-EU Trade and Cooperation Agreement (TCA), sandeel is a jointly managed stock, with the EU holding a 97% share of the quota in UK waters. The closure resulted in the activation of the TCA’s dispute resolution mechanism, for the first time, with the EU claiming that the closure lacked supporting scientific evidence and was discriminatory both against the EU and more specifically the Danish fishing industry, which holds 96% of the EU’s sandeel quota. The UK’s case, on the other hand, put forward that if the closure was revoked, then the EU’s actions would prevent the UK from progressing towards GES, specifically the marine birds indicator – a target which the EU also must meet. As such, by limiting UK progress on this issue in shared waters, the EU would also be limiting its own.
The Arbitration Tribunal convened to hear the dispute announced its ruling in April 2025. While both sides appeared to claim victory in the case, the ruling was largely in favour of the UK. The tribunal found that while the UK had made a procedural error in the manner in which it closed English waters, the closure was able to stay in place as long as the UK Government takes remedial action to achieve compliance with the principle of proportionality under the TCA in the 30 days following the publication of the judgment.
Further marine conservation measures were outlined in the Environment Act 2021, which specifies that by 2042 at least 70% of designated features within UK MPAs must be in ‘favourable condition’, with the remaining 30% in a ‘recovering condition’. Banning bottom trawling will be important in meeting this goal, and in this regard, there has also been some progress. In 2022, the UK Government prohibited bottom trawling in the entirety of four English MPAs, including Dogger Bank. An additional byelaw was brought into force in 2024, prohibiting bottom trawling in areas containing reef and rocky habitats within a further 13 English MPAs. In June 2025, the UK Government announced a Marine Management Organisation consultation on a plan to bring further management measures into place in 42 offshore MPAs, which includes largely removing bottom trawling from 41 of these sites.
Additionally, the UK government designated the first three highly protected marine areas (HPMAs) in England in 2023, which ban all ‘extractive, destructive and depositional activities’ such as commercial fishing, dredging and construction within these areas. However, the licencing to support the delivery of these areas is still outstanding.
Progress on bottom trawling bans in MPAs, as well as the designation of HMPAs, are both examples of England using its post-EU-Exit freedoms in order to move more quickly than the EU, though many NGOs and marine scientists have called for the ban to be widened to all areas of all MPAs, arguing that failure to do so would undermine the UK’s 30x30 goals under the Global Biodiversity Framework.
The Fisheries Act 2020 contains a sustainability objective referencing managing fish stocks at MSY levels but does not impose a binding date by which to achieve this. This opens up potential for divergence from the EU, which retains a binding commitment in the CFP to achieve MSY levels where possible for all stocks, though notably missed its initial 2020 deadline.
The UK published an Energy Security Strategy in 2022, which set an ambitious target of 50GW of offshore wind capacity by 2030, including 5GW from floating wind, and announced the prioritisation of its development through a streamlined Nationally Significant Infrastructure Projects permitting process. This is complemented by the 2021 North Sea Transition Deal, which alongside commitments to decarbonise the oil and gas sector in the region also included support for co-location of oil and gas and offshore wind infrastructure. While lower than the EU’s overall target, the UK’s offshore wind capacity target for 2030 is larger than that of any individual Member State.
Northern Ireland’s progress in this area since EU Exit has also been limited, particularly in its lack of overarching marine policy strategy documents. It did, however, introduce legislation in 2022 which banned bottom trawling in nine inshore MPAs. DAERA is also in the process of reviewing NI’s wider MPA strategy.
The Scottish Government consulted, in late 2022, on the possibility of introducing highly protected marine areas (HPMAs) to 10% of Scotland’s seas in which any activities that disturb the water column would be prohibited. In response to the findings of the consultation, it was announced in June 2023 that these proposals would not be carried forward, suggesting intra-UK divergence in this area, given that England has already begun to designate HMPAs. In August 2024, the Scottish Government undertook a consultation on fisheries management measures within Scottish MPAs, which could lead to either a full or partial ban on bottom trawling within these areas in future. The consultation summary was published in January 2025, with a view to a decision being made later this year.
As mentioned above, the Scottish Government moved to close its waters to sandeel fishing in March 2024. The judgement of the Arbitration Tribunal showed that Scotland did not commit the same procedural error as the UK Government for English North Sea waters, and as such the Scottish closure is able to stay in place without any necessary remedial action and can now become a permanent closure.
Progress in marine policy in Wales since EU Exit has been limited and notably slower than the rest of the UK. It has not introduced any new bans on bottom trawling in MPAs since EU Exit, though has committed to holding a consultation on expanding the Welsh Marine Conservation Zone, though this has not yet taken place.
Nature & Biodiversity
Divergence Summary
The adoption of the EU’s Nature Restoration Law in 2024 has opened up divergence with the four UK administrations, given its inclusion of ambitious and clearly defined targets for biodiversity and nature recovery. By contrast, comparable binding targets in England created under the Environment Act 2021 have been criticised for being less ambitious than those of the EU. In Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, specific and legally binding targets for biodiversity and nature restoration have not yet been introduced.
The EU’s Regulation on Deforestation-free Products which was approved in 2023 will also create divergence with the UK once it is operational since the UK has been moving slowly in introducing the secondary legislation for the Forest Risk Commodities (FRC) regulation for which the framework was established in Section 17 of the Environment Act 2021. Additionally, the current proposed scope of the UK regulation suggests active divergence from the equivalent EU regulation, given that it addresses only illegal deforestation, covers a smaller selection of commodities and only applies to larger businesses.
The Planning and Infrastructure Bill currently passing through the UK parliament, if implemented in its current formulation, would represent a regression in environmental protections in England and Wales compared to the current protections enjoyed by species and habitats under the UK Habitats Regulations which are based on EU directives.
Shark finning is a policy area in which the UK has moved more quickly than the EU, after its ban on the import and export of shark fin and fin-containing products in 2023. The EU has not yet made concrete plans to legislate in this area. England’s Biodiversity Net Gain scheme is another example of such an area, which since February 2024 has mandated a minimum 10% biodiversity gain in new developments. No equivalent scheme yet exists in the EU.
Despite the last [Conservative] Government signalling its intention to introduce a ban on the use of peat in horticultural products across England, Scotland and Wales, legislation did not materialise before the last election in mid-2024. It is not clear whether the current [Labour] Government wish to proceed in this area. If they do so, as IEEP UK reported in the 2024 Divergence State of Play report, it would mean the UK moving demonstrably ahead of the EU despite some level of action at an individual Member State level such as in Germany. It is also worth noting that a new peat map for England was published by the UK Government in 2025, further underlining the importance of protecting peatland areas.
The Nature Restoration Law, which entered into force in August 2024, has been described as the EU’s most significant piece of legislation related to nature since the 1992 Habitats Directive, with its adoption key for achieving the objectives outlined in the EU’s Green Deal and Biodiversity Strategy for 2030, and the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework. Despite being amended during a contentious passage through the European Parliament, the final version outlines ambitious and binding biodiversity and nature recovery targets for Member States. These include headline targets for restoring 20% of both land and sea areas by 2030, all ecosystems in need of restoration by 2050, as well as 30% of degraded habitats by 2030. Member States will need to develop National Restoration Plans showing how they will meet these targets by August 2026.
Aiming to tackle commodity-driven deforestation, the EU’s Regulation on Deforestation-free products (EUDR) was adopted in June 2023. The EUDR is a landmark piece of legislation that prohibits selected traded products – cattle, cocoa, coffee, palm oil, soy, rubber, wood and related products and derivatives – produced on land that has been subject to legal or illegal deforestation since the end of 2020 from entering the EU single market. Notably, the regulation applies to all businesses, regardless of their size. While it was originally scheduled to come into force at the end of 2024, it has now been delayed to December 2025 in order to give businesses and public authorities more time to prepare for its implementation. The legislation’s scope is currently limited to the protection of forests, but it contains a provision to conduct a review for the inclusion of other wooded land (OWL) after one year, and grasslands and wetlands after two years. However, the Commission’s report on the potential OWL expansion that was originally due in June 2024 has been postponed to June 2025 at the earliest.
A 2023 citizens’ initiative entitled ‘Stop finning – Stop the trade’ called for legislation banning the import, export and transit of shark fins to be implemented in the EU10. In response to the initiative, the European Commission committed to launching an impact assessment on the environmental, social and governance impacts of such regulation by the end of 2023, but this has not yet appeared.
In December 2022, the UK Government published nature recovery and biodiversity targets for England, as required by the Environment Act 2021. These included halting declines in species populations by 2030 and then increasing them by at least 10% by 2042; increasing tree and woodland cover to 16.5% of England’s total land area by 2050; restoring 70% of designated features in Marine Protected Areas to a favourable condition by 2042, with the rest in a recovering condition; and restoring or creating more than 500,000 hectares of wildlife-rich habitat to support the UK in meeting its ‘30 by 30’ commitments. These targets have been criticised by NGOs (including IEEP UK) and legal experts for their lack of ambition compared to those set under the EU’s Nature Restoration Law.
Biodiversity Net Gain (BNG) is a development approach introduced in England under the Environment Act 2021, which mandates that any development must produce at least a 10% improvement in biodiversity through the creation or enhancement of habitats, in comparison to what was there before development commenced. This requirement entered into force in February 2024 and can be achieved through either on-site or off-site improvements, or, as a last resort, through the purchase of statutory biodiversity credits from the government. BNG’s introduction was widely welcomed by nature groups and has placed England ahead of the EU – which has no equivalent scheme – in this area. However, a new government consultation launched in May 2025 proposing a reduction in BNG requirements for small and medium-sized housebuilding projects may place the scheme’s initial success under threat.
The Planning and Infrastructure Bill introduced in March 2025, and which is currently passing through parliament, has provisions intended to accelerate housing and infrastructure development in England with accompanying mechanisms to alter nature protection. It has been widely criticised for its potential to weaken existing environmental protections within planning law in England and Wales. The bill in its current form grants developers the ability to offset damage to protected sites and species through a ‘Nature Restoration Levy’ which funds compensatory restoration projects elsewhere allowing for environmental obligations under the Habitats Regulations 2017 and Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981 to be sidestepped. In early May 2025, The Office for Environmental Protection (OEP) provided advice to the Government which described the provisions for environmental protection in the current form of the bill as a ‘regression’ – particularly for habitats and species protected under the existing Habitats Regulations.
Under Schedule 17 of the Environment Act 2021, regulated businesses in the UK are prohibited from using illegally produced forest risk commodities (FRCs), including both raw and derived products. However, secondary legislation is needed to operationalise these requirements and still has not been tabled. The proposed FRC regulation is likely to be narrower in scope than the EUDR, in it being limited to illegal deforestation (as opposed to both legal and illegal deforestation) and excluding rubber, coffee and wood products. Additionally, it is only set to apply to large businesses with annual revenues of over £50 million, unlike the EUDR which applies to all businesses.
The UK Government announced a ban on the use of peat in the horticultural sector in England in 2022, clarifying in 2023 that this would apply to the amateur horticultural sector by the end of 2024, the professional sector with some exemptions by 2026, and a full ban from 2030. However, despite this commitment, no legislation banning peat has been brought forward by the government. A Private Members’ bill has been introduced to try to speed up the introduction of this ban and apply it to all horticultural peat by the end of 2025 – however as it is not a government-sponsored Bill, it is unlikely to come into effect.
The UK Shark Fins Act 2023 banned the import and export of detached shark fins and associated products and also the removal of fins from sharks in UK waters. This act applies across all four nations of the UK.
A new programme for government for 2024-2027 was published by the Northern Ireland Executive in March 2025. The document includes commitments to publish a ‘Nature Recovery Plan’ to ensure Northern Ireland is in line to achieve the Global Biodiversity Framework ‘30 by 30’ targets (which indeed apply to all four nations of the UK) but does not provide a precise timeframe. A Nature Recovery Challenge Fund to support small-scale species recovery and ‘30 by 30’ projects was launched by DAERA in January 2025.
In Northern Ireland, previous proposals to ban sales of peat compost have been scrapped, and no further commitments made.
Scotland’s Biodiversity Strategy to 2045 was published in 2024 and includes a government commitment to produce a Natural Environment Bill (NEB). This was introduced by the Scottish Government in March 2025, and aims to impose a duty upon Scottish Ministers to set legally binding targets for biodiversity and nature restoration across three mandatory areas: the condition and extent of habitats, the status of threatened species, and the environmental conditions for nature regeneration.
The NEB is an important piece of legislation; by paving the way for the setting of such targets, it places the biodiversity challenge on a similar level to that of climate change. However, in its current form, the bill does not itself introduce legally binding, time-bound biodiversity and nature recovery targets, instead only creating a framework for their future introduction, which is likely to only be in late 2026 or early 2027. As such, Scotland is lagging behind the EU and England, which now both have restoration targets, as noted above.
Part 2 of the NEB grants Scottish ministers the authority to amend current Environmental Impact Assessment and Habitats Regulations, with the Scottish Government citing a loss of powers previously available to them prior to Brexit under the European Communities Act 1972 as the reason for this move. However, this section of the bill has raised concerns amongst environmental NGOs such as Scottish Wildlife LINK, who note that these powers could be used to weaken existing environmental protections.
The Scottish Government ran a public consultation on ending the sale of peat in Scotland in 2023. It provided an update in 2024, stating that it was in the process of reviewing the findings of this consultation, but has made no further comments or commitments.
Wales’s nature and biodiversity strategy is outlined in the Nature Recovery Action Plan for Wales, which was last updated in 2020. The document does not contain any statutory targets for nature recovery and biodiversity. However, the Welsh government carried out a ‘Biodiversity deep dive’ in 2022 in an effort to identify methods to meet its commitments under the Global Biodiversity framework and published a white paper in 2024 which laid out a plan for a new bill introducing a new biodiversity target framework – the Environment (Principles, Governance and Biodiversity Targets) (Wales) Bill which was introduced in June 2025. Despite the introduction of the framework, the bill outlines that that the first biodiversity targets will only be due three years after it is passed, in line with the Welsh government’s communication earlier in 2025 that such targets are unlikely to be in place before 2029. Alongside this framework, the bill also seeks to establish a new environmental watchdog for Wales – the Office of Environmental Governance Wales – which will monitor public authority compliance with environmental law.
As with England, the Welsh Government announced in 2022 that retail sales of peat in horticulture were to be banned. However, no legislation has been introduced to implement this commitment.
Pesticides
Divergence Summary
In policy relating to pesticides, we find some of the clearest evidence of divergence between the EU and UK after Brexit particularly around changes to Maximum Residue Levels. Standards set for the use of various pesticides in Great Britain have begun to differ – in some cases, sharply – from that of the EU. Northern Ireland continues to apply rules relating to pesticides set by the EU. Though it does appear that the UK Government has now closed a divergence gap that had opened up with the EU with regard to the effective banning of ‘bee-killing’ neonicotinoids.
IEEP UK reported in its 2024 divergence report on the fate of the European Commission’s proposed Sustainable Use of Pesticides Regulation. Despite the bold plan to establish legally binding targets at EU level to reduce by 50% the overall use and the (estimated) risk of chemical pesticides as well as the use of the more hazardous pesticides by 2030 included within the Farm to Fork Strategy and Biodiversity Strategy, the proposal suffered a series of blows to weaken it by Member States and Parliamentarians and consequently it was formally withdrawn in March 2024. It is not foreseen that a new proposal will be made in the short or medium term.
The European Commission extended to 2033 the current approval for use of glyphosate, a common pesticide which has been under scrutiny on both sides of the Channel. In Great Britain, glyphosate is approved for use until late 2025 but a ban is unlikely so in practice no divergence in policy will emerge on its use.
In policy relating to pesticides, we find some of the clearest evidence of divergence between the EU and UK after Brexit. In particular, the standards set for the use of various pesticides in the UK (and more specifically Great Britain) have begun to differ – in some cases, sharply – from that of the EU.
Changes have been made by the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) in GB to Maximum Residue Levels (MRLs) for a significant number of substances meaning that the maximum concentration of pesticide residue allowed in or on food of both animal and non-animal origin (i.e., plants) are now different to standards GB inherited at the point of Brexit. The HSE conducts risk assessments to evaluate the danger or potential danger to humans and the environment. The HSE has been gradually making announcements to adopt MRLs in line with internationally agreed standards set by the Codex Alimentarius.
Pesticide Action Network UK (PAN-UK) report that there are changes to 764 MRLs in total between 2021-2025 and between 2022 and 2024, 115 MRLs were weakened on various types of produce, mostly fruit and vegetables but also and meat products. This is significant because it highlights an intent by the HSE on behalf of GB to diverge from standards previously set in coordination with other EU member states.
In addition to divergence in MRL standards, PAN-UK has identified 12 pesticide active substances, seven of which are ‘Highly Hazardous Pesticides, that are approved for use in GB but are not in the EU, some of which are carcinogens and/or endocrine disrupting chemicals.
Where before Brexit, responsibility for reviewing and agreeing on the level of risk that a pesticide might pose was shared between all Member States, whereas afterwards the HSE took on sole responsibility for approvals in GB and found it challenging to manage the demands placed upon it. A lack of capacity and capability is arguably a major factor in this though it could also conceivably point to a wider shift in attitude and approach to the tolerance of risk taken by the HSE since leaving the EU.
However, the case of neonicotinoid pesticides somewhat clouds this picture. Some neonicotinoid pesticides have been banned for use in the GB since 2018, specifically three neonicotinoids – clothianidin, imidacloprid and thiamethoxam – so-called ‘bee-killing’ pesticides. The previous [Conservative] Government waived through emergency derogations for four years in a row allowing these pesticides for use in sugar beet production. Though there was a temporary derogation also allowed by the EU in 2021 and 2022, the Court of Justice of the European Union ruled that no such derogations could be granted and thus leading to a divergence in implementation of law.
The current Government however, in early 2025, rejected an application for a further re-authorisation of these pesticide’s use, stating that it would end their use. The UK Government’s announcement however only applied to England and Ministers stated their intention to work with devolved administrations to seek a common approach (i.e., a complete ending of these neonicotinoids across Great Britain, though it is worth mentioning that sugar beet is not widely grown in Scotland and Wales).
Under the terms of the Windsor Framework Agreement, Northern Ireland continues to apply rules relating to pesticides set by the European Union and as such there has been no divergence between Northern Ireland and the EU. However, as indicated in the other sections, there has been intra-UK divergence, that is, between Great Britain – England, Scotland and Wales – with Northern Ireland.
Water
Divergence Summary
Water pollution is one of the most high-profile environmental issues in the UK.
Despite much public perception, until the new 2024 EU Urban Wastewater Treatment Directive (UWTD), there had actually been little or no substantive legislative divergence in major water policy between the EU and UK. All four parts of the UK still implement regulations which are linked with the Water Framework Directive and Bathing Waters Directive – the same as EU member states. The overwhelming issue in this policy area, remains implementation.
Indeed, even with the ‘new’ UWTD, EU member states do not need to transpose this directive into their domestic legislation until 31 July 2027 and many of the provisions are not required to be implemented until well into the 2030’s meaning that divergence in practice has largely not occurred either. By way of contrast, all four parts of the UK – England, Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales – are implementing regulations emanating from the earlier 1991 Urban Wastewater Treatment Directive when the UK was a member of the EU.
Having said this though, the 2024 UWTD is a marked change from its predecessor (not least for example the introduction of extended producer responsibility for pharmaceutical and cosmetic producers) and when changes begin to take place in the EU’s member states it will signal significant divergence with the UK.
The most significant development in EU water policy since the UK’s departure is the 2024 revision of the Urban Wastewater Treatment Directive (UWWTD). The revision introduces several significant changes to the previous 1991 UWWTD, many significant. The UK, in effect, still applies legislation that is rooted in the 1991 directive. The 2024 directive therefore poses material divergence in policy from the EU as highlighted by IEEP UK research.
The 2024 directive introduces stricter requirements for treatment and collection (for example it requires the provision of collecting systems for urban wastewater for agglomerations of between 1,000 and 2,000 people by 31 December 2035 as opposed to agglomerations above 2,000 people under the previous 1991 UWWTD). It also requires Member States to produce (and review every 6 years) integrated urban wastewater management plans for the largest urban areas, including plans for managing storm water overflows for some areas. Significantly, the 2024 revision introduces extended producer responsibility for producers of medicines and cosmetics, requiring them to cover costs of treating their chemicals in wastewater.
The European Commission proposed in 2022 a revision of the 2000 Water Framework Directive too, though this has yet to be agreed. In particular, the proposed amendment includes revising the lists of pollutants in surface water and groundwater to include harmful chemicals such as PFAS chemicals. This would mean EU member states being required to meet stricter water quality standards for these pollutants as well as making monitoring data available on a more frequent basis. However, the proposal is stalled following disagreement between the EU’s main institutions – Parliament, Council and Commission.
By far and away the most significant area of legislative divergence between the EU and England is with regard to 2024 revision of the Urban Wastewater Treatment Directive (UWWTD). Regulations in England are rooted in the provisions set out in its predecessor, the 1991 Urban Wastewater Treatment Directive. IEEP UK research set out the areas of key divergence between the 1991 and 2024 directives (See also further IEEP UK research here).
In England, as in many other countries in Europe, implementation of water laws including around wastewaters but also for example, the Water Framework Directive, remains the key challenge despite the Government making water policy (or specifically tackling water pollution) one of its top five environmental priorities.
England will miss by a ‘considerable’ margin, according to the Office for Environmental Protection (OEP), its main target under regulations related to the Water Framework Directive to bring 77% of surface water bodies into good ecological status by 2027. Indeed, the OEP say this figure could be as low as 21% and following these findings, it has launched an investigation into possible failures of Defra and the Environment Agency to comply with the Water Framework Directive.
Further clarification on the UK government’s requirements under the WFD was also provided by a judgement released in April 2025 from the Court of Appeals in the case of the Pickering Fishery Association v the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, which found that the government’s current approach to River Basin Management Plans is unlawful and that it had failed to adequately protect the ecosystem of the Costa Beck near Pickering. Its determination that government programmes of measures under the WFD must identify actions for each water body to achieve their environmental objectives supports the OEP’s interpretation of relevant environmental law.
A failure to implement existing water laws is not confined to England though. The European Environment Agency state that only 38% of surface water bodies in Europe have a good or high ecological status, and the WFD’s target for surface waters and groundwaters to meet a good status by 2027 is not on track to be met.
Failure to meet water targets – by a big margin - has led some to question whether the rules themselves ought to be changed. For example, the ‘one-out-all-out’ rule under the WFD comes under particular scrutiny13 with the Chairman of Environment Agency England arguing that it understates improvements and focuses attention on indicators which may be difficult to achieve or make little difference to overall water quality.
Such policies have not been changed yet. But the Government for England have made other policy changes. The Water (Special Measures) Act, introduces a strengthened monitoring and enforcement regime, largely consistent with new provisions outlined in the 2024 UWWTD (Articles 21 and 29). The 2021 Environment Act, requires the Secretary of State in consultation with regulators, local authorities and sewage undertakers to prepare a plan to be presented before Parliament for managing storm overflows in England.
Prominent judicial activity, significant attention from the National Audit Office looking into the role of Defra and regulators (Ofwat, Environment Agency England and the Drinking Water Inspectorate) and a high-profile Government commission chaired by Sir Jon Cunliffe to review the water sector, are all likely to lead to changes in water policy and possibly legislation too.
As with the other nations of the UK, EU-led legislative divergence is centred around the Urban Wastewater Treatment Directive (UWWTD). Regulations related to this in Northern Ireland are rooted in provisions set out in its predecessor, 1991 Urban Wastewater Treatment Directive. IEEP UK research set out the areas of key divergence between the 1991 and 2024 directives (See also further IEEP UK research here).
Like the other parts of the UK (and the EU), implementing legislation has been a challenge too. This is epitomised perhaps more forcefully than elsewhere in the UK though by algal blooms at Lough Neagh, the largest freshwater lake in the British Isles. The lack of an updated River Basin Management Plan, which was due in 2021, arguably does not help the situation as the target of 70% of water bodies in Northern Ireland reaching good status by 2027 will not be met (data from 2021 indicates only 38% met ‘good or better’ status).
As with the other nations of the UK, EU-led legislative divergence is centred around the Urban Wastewater Treatment Directive (UWWTD). Regulations related to this in Scotland are rooted in provisions set out in its predecessor, 1991 Urban Wastewater Treatment Directive. IEEP UK research set out the areas of key divergence between the 1991 and 2024 directives (See also further IEEP UK research here). Indeed, Environmental Standards Scotland (ESS) has informed the Scottish Government that it should review the new UWWTD to uphold their commitment to alignment with EU environmental policy.
Unlike the changes to the UWWTD, policy objectives set out under the Water Framework Directive and its implementing legislation in Scotland remain largely the same since the UK left the EU. Under its most recent River Basin Management Plan, Scotland aims for 81% of water bodies to reach ‘good’ status by 2027. The Scottish Government has stated that 67.9% of Scotland’s overall water environment is in good condition (which places it above the European average) and that Scotland’s rivers, lochs, canals and burns are ‘the best in the UK’.
Despite this there are some concerns. Environmental NGOs such as Surfers Against Sewage for example have published a recent study that says Scotland’s bathing water quality is ranked among the lowest in Europe. ESS have also recently highlighted gaps in policy effectiveness with regard to storm water overflows and their impact on the environment, notably the lack of publicly available information, the lack of monitoring information being supplied to the regulator and excessive spillage of sewage at some storm water overflows. ESS is currently examining the wider river basin management planning system in Scotland with a particular focus on diffuse pollution to water from agricultural sources.
As with the other nations of the UK, EU-led legislative divergence is centred around the Urban Wastewater Treatment Directive (UWWTD). Regulations related to this in Wales are rooted in provisions set out in its predecessor, 1991 Urban Wastewater Treatment Directive. IEEP UK research set out the areas of key divergence between the 1991 and 2024 directives (See also further IEEP UK research here).
Unlike the changes to the UWWTD, policy objectives set out under the Water Framework Directive and its implementing regulations in Wales remain largely the same since the UK left the EU. Wales has a target of achieving 94% of surface water bodies at Good Ecological Status by 2027, however data published in 2025 suggested that only 40% of bodies were at the required standard. With the exception of parts of the Water (Special Measures) Act, which will also apply to Wales, there has been little legislative change in water policy relating to Wales since the UK left the EU.
Looking ahead, it is entirely possible that recommendations proposed by the Independent Water Commission chaired by Sir Jon Cunliffe which applies to Wales (as well as England) could lead to changes in water policy and possibly legislation too.
Assessment Approach
Methodology
It is now five years since the UK left the EU. This Divergence in UK/EU Environmental Policy: State of Play 2025 report is an attempt to capture the evolving story of legislative and policy change as the UK forges a new chapter in its journey to a more sustainable, post-Brexit future. IEEP has a long history of tracking legislative change, for more see our European Environmental Policy Manual.
The work is part of a longer running project at IEEP UK to track and assess the significance of divergence in environmental policy, starting with some Initial Reflections on what is meant by divergence and why it matters and with an explanation of the Motives for and against divergence. This 2025 report and interactive dashboard also builds on IEEP UK’s 2024 State of Play report.
Our work to capture this story whilst aiming to be comprehensive, is ultimately a subjective one.
On one level, the range of topics and issues we include and report on is limited to those we feel have a major and direct impact on the environment. We have, for example, decided to report on several climate change-related developments that better fit within the purview of say, the Department of Energy & Net Zero and DG Climate Action (e.g., the carbon border adjustment mechanism and energy efficiency). There are also some elements of agriculture policy which we report on, and some industry, transport, marine and general cross-cutting related developments too, though all intersect with or have some degree of import to how we view the environment or sustainability generally.
As one may imagine, environment related measures under the purview of Defra and DG Environment make up the bulk of the topics and issues we examine.
However, we do not claim to be exhaustive or consider all environmental measures. We have been selective, partly for brevity’s sake, but also partly because we consider those aspects to be the most significant and consequential in policy. There are some areas of policy that impact on the environment, including food, which is an area where the existing legislation at the point the UK left the EU did not cover environmental considerations, and where different approaches to policy are at a member state level, rather than as a point of UK and EU divergence.
Prior to leaving the EU, each of the four parts of the UK implemented broadly the same set of environmental rules, all derived in large part from the European Union. Now however, there are four indigenous sets of policy (with only a few exceptions) as the Devolved Administrations also ‘take back control’ meaning that the overall picture of divergence is increasingly complex with many moving parts. Keeping track of legislative and policy developments not only at the EU level but also at the UK, Northern Irish, Scottish and Welsh Devolved Administration level is increasingly difficult.
As such, some developments may be missed and IEEP UK welcomes feedback and evidence to make improvements to this work.
Ratings
Our assessment of whether the UK (or part thereof) is diverging or not from EU policy is also subjective. It is based on the evidence we have gathered from a variety of sources and relies on our judgement. Trying to effectively communicate a broad direction of travel for a theme (e.g., water, climate, circular economy etc) that includes multiple specific policies and legislation is often difficult. We are conscious that a simplistic score can obscure a complex narrative and so we have tried to note this where it is the most acute. But on the whole the ratings reflect the broad direction of travel.
Our assessment is a snapshot in time and is therefore prone to change.
Policy development does not stand still, and news laws are created (or repealed) and the relative position of one party versus another can change too. Where we assess one party to be ‘behind’ the legislative and policy development of another, it does not mean it will ever thus be. We have tried to reflect in the narrative of the thematic sections some of this direction of travel, however the ratings are based on current commitments in policy and legislation, not on the state of implementation of those policies, nor potential future policy change.
Finally, it is worth underlining that these ratings are relative and do not mean the current policies in any of the jurisdictions are necessarily adequate or inadequate. Rather, this is to distinguish between the relative trajectories of the UK, or four nation approaches compared to EU policy.
Elements indicate a more progressive policy than EU policy
Policy is broadly similar to current EU policy
Elements indicate policy is not keeping pace with more progressive EU policy
Elements indicate a Regression in policy since Brexit
* Based on current commitments in policy and legislation, not implementation, nor potential future policy change
** These ratings are relative and do not mean the current policies in any of the jurisdictions are necessarily adequate or inadequate.
***Each theme covers multiple areas of policy and legislation and so the ratings reflect the broad direction of travel
Download the Divergence in UK/EU Environmental Policy: State of Play 2025 full report
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