Question to the Department for Exiting the European Union :

To ask the Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union, on what date the UK will cease to be a member of the EEA.

The UK is a party to the EEA Agreement by virtue of its membership of the EU. In the absence of any further action, the EEA Agreement will no longer operate in respect of the UK when we leave the EU in March 2019.

However, at the March European Council we agreed with the EU that the UK is to be treated as a Member State for the purposes of international agreements for the duration of the implementation period. The EU will notify other parties of this approach in due course.

This includes the EEA Agreement, which governs crucial elements of our trading and non-trading relationship with the three EEA EFTA states - Norway, Iceland and Liechtenstein.

Once the implementation period ends, the EEA Agreement will no longer apply to the UK. We will instead seek to put in place new arrangements to secure our relationship with the EEA EFTA states.