Research organisations nervously watching Brexit developments

The prospects for a deal on the UK’s withdrawal from the EU shot up and then crashed back down within 24 hours, leaving European research organisations still needing to prepare for all possible scenarios.

News broke late in the afternoon on 14 November that negotiators had reached an agreement on the UK’s withdrawal from the EU. Britain’s prime minister Theresa May met with top-ranking members of her government and announced that there was a “collective decision” that the government should back the deal.

But the likelihood that British MPs will vote through the agreement was dealt a potentially fatal blow the following morning, when the government minister nominally responsible for relations with the EU, Brexit secretary Dominic Raab, resigned over the agreement along with several other ministers.