Dr. C. Moser: The unsettled post-Brexit Legal Status of the EU and its Representatives in the UK

Only three weeks after the Trade and Cooperation Agreement between the EU and the UK provisionally came into force on 1 January 2021, hence sealing the UK–EU divorce, we could already witness the first post-Brexit diplomatic incident. Indeed, as became public on 21st January 2021 London refused to confer the EU’s delegation to the UK—including its ambassador, João Vale de Almeida—the diplomatic status offered by the 1961 Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations.
Instead, the UK said it would classify the EU as an international organization, implying that the Union’s representatives would enjoy more restricted privileges and immunities. The argument put forward by the Foreign Office to withhold the full diplomatic status to the EU’s ambassador and his team was that London did not want to set a precedent by treating an international organization like a State. The EU, in response, posited that the Union was not a typical international organization and should therefore, in line with well-established international practice, receive a distinctive treatment when it comes to diplomatic status questions.

In light of these developments, Dr. Carolyn Moser, head of the research group BORDERLINES at Max Planck Institute for Comparative Public Law and International Law, first rehashes the basics of diplomatic privileges and immunities, then sheds light on the Union’s international role and subsequent diplomatic status, and finally discusses the UK’s legal stance on the matter.

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