The European Union is leaning on the government of the UK not to lower its environmental protection standards after quitting the EU in March 2019.

Michel Barnier, the EU’s chief Brexit negotiator, this week called for a non-regression clause to be anchored in the treaty regulating relations between London and the 27 remaining countries member states following the UK’s exit.

“In the future relationship we should commit to no lowering of the standards of environmental protection,” Barnier told a meeting on the environment organized by the European Parliament. The UK should not be able to gain competitive advantage by ditching regulations post-Brexit, he said.

A coalition of 13 leading environmental protection organizations, including Friends of the Earth, the WWF and Britain’s National Trust, warned earlier this year that there was a “significant risk” that the UK’s environmental protections could be reduced after Brexit. Campaign group Client Earth complained of a “worrying complacency” over the environmental damage that could occur in the UK.

In Barnier’s view, the EU-British agreement could be modelled on the CETA (Canada-EU free trade agreement) or Japan FTA (free trade agreement) provisions, but would need to go farther.

Without such a legal safeguard, the chief negotiator said, the UK could decide to reduce its environmental protection standards to gain competitive advantage in trade. This would not only increase pollution and environmentally harmful production in Britain, but also increase pollution for neighboring countries.

According to Barnier, reduced UK ambition on air pollution could result in neighboring states such as Ireland, Belgium, France and the Netherlands needing up to 9% percent more effort to reach their clean air objectives, with significant additional costs.

With the so-called Great Repeal Bill, the government in London plans to transfer all EU law into British law. Thereafter, the government’s ministers will be free to remove regulations they do not like on a case-by-case basis. All EU laws will stay on the UK books until they are specifically repealed.