Question to the Department for Transport:

To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, whether he has sought legal advice on the relationship between the European Court of Justice and the European Aviation Safety Agency.

The Government is considering carefully all the potential implications arising from the UK’s exit from the EU, including the implications for continued or discontinued participation in the European Aviation Safety Agency.

The Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) interprets EU law and is the ultimate arbiter of EU law within the EU and its Member States. The European Aviation Safety Agency is an EU regulatory agency and therefore comes under the remit of the CJEU. EASA performs a limited number of executive functions on behalf of the Union, but its primary role is to provide technical rulemaking advice for the Union to adopt harmonised safety regulations implemented at national level.