The government’s Brexit strategy faces a fresh legal challenge in the high court on Friday when campaigners argue that parliament must separately legislate to remove the UK from the European Economic Area (EEA) and the single market.

After months of resisting – and ultimately losing – a series of courtroom battles over ministers’ use of their executive powers to trigger article 50 and leave the EU, government lawyers may be forced to launch a renewed defence of the royal prerogative.



The government is partially resisting the judicial review application on the grounds that no decision about how to leave the EEA has yet been made and that it is therefore not a decision that is open to challenge.

The new case revolves around article 127 of the EEA treaty, which states : “Each contracting party may withdraw from this agreement provided it gives at least 12 months’ notice in writing to the other contracting parties.”

The challenge has been brought by Adrian Yalland and Peter Wilding, who runs the pro-single market organisation British Influence. Wilding is the man credited with inventing the term Brexit in 2012.

They have been joined by a second set of claimants who have been identified only by the letters W, L, T and B. The second group of claimants say they do not want to be named for fear of being targeted by the type of abuse and threats that have been directed at Gina Miller, the lead claimant in the article 50 case at the supreme court.



The unnamed applicants have various nationalities and have brought the action in order to highlight the “state of limbo” into which they believe they will fall following UK withdrawal from the EU.

The European Economic Area Act 1993, their lawyers argue, established EEA rights in UK domestic law. Lawyers for both groups believe that parliament must authorise a separate departure process from the one it has begun for article 50 of the EU treaty.

Yalland, a political lobbyist and founder of the Single Market Justice Campaign, said: “I have campaigned for parliamentary sovereignty and accountable government for 20 years and now I want parliament to exercise its sovereignty by deciding if the UK should withdraw from the single market treaty.



“Parliament, not government, took us into the treaty and so parliament, not government, must decide if and when we leave. I voted to leave the EU but parliament did not intend the referendum to cover the issue of membership of the EEA. The government should stop seeking to stretch the mandate to leave the EU to cover things parliament did not intend the referendum to cover.

“The referendum was on membership of the EU, not the EEA, nor of [the European court of human rights]. It was not an opinion poll on immigration. I want nothing less than Brexit. But anything more than Brexit is for parliament to permit. The government has a mandate, not a blank cheque. We are a parliamentary democracy, not an elected dictatorship.”

Yalland said a hard Brexit would risk detaching Scotland from the UK. He added: “An independent Scotland may be unlikely to join the EU, but it is a credible candidate for EFTA [European Free Trade Association] membership – which would give it full membership of the single market.”

Responding to the case last month, a government spokesman said: “The UK is party to the EEA agreement only in its capacity as an EU member state. Once the UK leaves the EU, the EEA agreement will automatically cease to apply to the UK.”

Commenting on the EEA case, David Golten, head of commercial litigation at the law firm Wedlake Bell, said: “Most people have never heard of article 127 – the trigger to leaving the European Economic Area – but it is article 50’s bigger and uglier brother … To remain or not in the single market is now the field of battle.

“The remainers and the soft Brexiteers will join forces. There may have to be a general election. Those who lost the argument on membership of the EU will fight tooth and claw to keep us in the single market.”

