While it can be tricky to keep track of the UK’s continuously evolving political situation, what we do know is that as it stands the UK is due to leave the European Union on 31st October. With not too much time left before that deadline, it’s worth getting to grips with how Brexit will affect your business, and to start getting prepared.
We’ve teamed up with The Coalition for a Digital Economy (Coadec) and the UK Tech Cluster Group, to try and disseminate for tech startups and scaleups, what they need to do to get ready for a potential “no-deal” Brexit.
Starter for 10
Unsurprisingly, there’s an awful lot of legislation to trawl through, so our friends at Coadec have done some of the hard work for you. They’ve put together the top 10 topics you need to consider when getting your business ready for a potential no-deal Brexit. And what’s more their guidance for each section has been boiled down to a 1-pager (or thereabouts).
The topics covered in chapters of the guidance include:
Data protection and data flows
Employment, immigration and visas
Taxation and VAT
The e-Commerce Directive
The Digital Single Market Framework
EU Legislation in Limbo
Domain names
Harmful, illegal, and terrorist content
Geoblocking and cross-border content
Horizon 2020 and R&D funding
Who it’s for
With lots of uncertainty, and the default option of a no-deal Brexit potentially less than six weeks away, it’s important to get any necessary ducks in a row. It’s worth taking a closer look at the guidance if your company receives personal data from the EU or EEA, if you employ any EU citizens in the UK or any UK citizens in the EU, if you sell digital content in the EU or if your users create public-facing content. You should take a look at the Digital Single Market Framework details if you are doing business with European users or consumers. The guidance also covers what to do if you have or use a .eu domain, run platforms or services which host and share user-generated content (including user comments or reviews), or if you have received funding from the EU’s Horizon 2020 scheme (directly or indirectly). And if in doubt, just take a look at the guidance as a bit of bedtime reading. A number of the implications of changes could mean that your business will be in breach of the law if you’d don’t act now, so better safe than sorry.
Keeping it as simple as possible, the guidance offers a 1-pager on each of the topics covering:
What’s actually changing
What to do about it
Links to additional resources