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Thomas Reilly

Ambassador Thomas Reilly, Covington’s Head of UK Public Policy and a key member of the firm’s Global Problem Solving Group and Brexit Task Force, draws on over 20 years of diplomatic and commercial roles to advise clients on their strategic business objectives.

Ambassador Reilly was most recently British Ambassador to Morocco between 2017 and 2020, and prior to this, the Senior Advisor on International Government Relations & Regulatory Affairs and Head of Government Relations at Royal Dutch Shell between 2012 and 2017. His former roles with the Foreign and Commonwealth Office included British Ambassador Morocco & Mauritania (2017-2018), Deputy Head of Mission at the British Embassy in Egypt (2010-2012), Deputy Head of the Climate Change & Energy Department (2007-2009), and Deputy Head of the Counter Terrorism Department (2005-2007). He has lived or worked in a number of countries including Jordan, Kuwait, Yemen, Libya, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, and Argentina.

At Covington, Ambassador Reilly works closely with our global team of lawyers and investigators as well as over 100 former diplomats and senior government officials, with significant depth of experience in dealing with the types of complex problems that involve both legal and governmental institutions.

Ambassador Reilly started his career as a solicitor specialising in EU and commercial law but no longer practices as a solicitor.

Our December blog, examined the optimism at the end of last year that a way could be found out of the political deadlock that has paralysed the Northern Ireland Assembly for the last two years. As our blog noted, although those hopes did not materialize, the fact that the discussions had reached such an advanced stage suggested that a solution might be found in the New Year.  The announcement by the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) on 30 January that a Deal had been reached seems to justify that optimism.

A Historical Recap

The 1998 Belfast Good Friday Agreement (GFA) brought an end to 30 years of ‘The Troubles’.  It struck a delicate balance between the competing interests of the Unionist and Nationalist communities in Northern Ireland.  Key to its success was the removal of border infrastructure between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland, and the creation of a Power Sharing Executive (PSE) for Northern Ireland.  The PSE allocates the position of First Minister to the largest political party in Northern Ireland, and the position of Deputy First Minister to the second largest.  Other than the status implied by the titles, there is very little practical difference between the two roles.

Northern Ireland’s parliament, the Stormont Assembly, only actually sat for any extended period of time between 2007-2017, but, until the last set of elections, the DUP had always held the position of First Minister.

Brexit and Northern Ireland

Northern Ireland voted by 56:44 to remain in the EU in the 2016 Brexit referendum.  The Unionist community largely voted ‘Leave’, believing it would consolidate Northern Ireland’s position within the UK; the Nationalist community generally voted ‘Remain’ for the opposite reason. Continue Reading The DUP and The Deal: Power-Sharing Returns to N Ireland

In previous blogs, we have written about the EU-China relationship and how the EU was increasingly focused on delivering its policy of Strategic Autonomy. We are beginning to see the concrete implementation of this strategic intent, with the EU Commission approving a €902 million German State aid measure to support the construction of an electric vehicle battery production plant.  As Margrethe Vestager, EVP for Competition Policy noted, this is the first individual aid to have been approved under the Temporary Crisis and Transition Framework since March 2023 and its approval will keep the battery plant in the EU, rather than it moving to the US.

And the EU is planning to take further measures to enhance and protect its economic security in pursuit of the goal of strategic autonomy. On December 10, the Commission unveiled its Agenda outlining for items to be addressed in early 2024. Of note is the European Economic Security Package (EESP), due for discussion on 24 January.

It had been planned to adopt the EESP by the end of 2023.  However, its adoption faced delays due to Member States’ concerns about ceding authority to Brussels in an area traditionally reserved for national competence. For its part, the Commission argues that a “Europeanization” of the EU trade rules was required to ensure consistency across the bloc following decisions by various Member States to issue their own trade measures (for example, on export controls).

Although full details of the EESP have not yet been released, key components of the EESP will include a revision of the Foreign Direct Investment Screening Regulation and an initiative regulating outbound investments. The Agenda for 24 January also includes a non-binding Communication restricting export of dual-use items.Continue Reading The European Economic Security Package

Over the last few weeks, hopes have been rising that a way could be found out of the political deadlock that has paralysed the N Ireland Assembly over the last two years. Those hopes were cruelly dashed on 18 December, but the fact that the discussions had reached such an advanced stage gives hope that a solution may be closer and reachable in the New Year.

A Historical Recap

The Belfast Good Friday Agreement (GFA) of 1998 brought to an end 30 years of ‘The Troubles’ through a delicate piece of negotiation which carefully balanced the competing goals and interests of the Unionist and Nationalist communities in N Ireland.  A key element of the Agreement was the removal of all border infrastructure between N and S Ireland (which for the Nationalist community was a very visible reminder of the division of the Island of Ireland).  Another crucial ingredient was the creation of a Power Sharing Executive (PSE) for N Ireland. Under this part of the Agreement, the largest Political Party in Northern Ireland would hold the position of First Minister, with the second largest holding the position of Deputy First Minister.  The Agreement ensured that in practice, there was very little difference (other than status) between the two roles.

For 24 years, the largest political party in N Ireland was the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) who accordingly held the position of First Minister, with Sinn Fein holding the position of Deputy First Minister.

Brexit and N Ireland

In the 2016 referendum, N Ireland voted by 56:44 to remain in the EU, with the Unionist community broadly supporting Leave on the basis it would solidify N Ireland’s position within the UK.  The UK left the Customs Union and the Single Market as part of the Brexit deal with the EU.  In theory, that should have pulled N Ireland out of both entities as well, re-creating border infrastructure between N and S Ireland. Brexit (requiring a border) collided with the reality of the GFA (abolishing the border), creating a circle which was impossible to square. In the end, the UK government placed the border between the UK and the EU in the Irish Sea, effectively cutting the N Ireland economy off from the rest of the UK and enabling companies to trade more easily with the Republic of Ireland than with GB.Continue Reading Brexit and N Ireland

What You Need to Know.

  • After two days of intense negotiations, world leaders adopted a draft decision that sets out international climate priorities in response to the findings of the first Global Stocktake under the Paris Agreement.  The decision covers several thematic areas, including mitigation of greenhouse gas emissions, adaptation and resilience in the face of climate change, financing and means of implementation and support for climate projects, and loss and damage funding for climate-vulnerable nations.  The text of the draft decision can be found on the UNFCCC’s website here.
  • The most highly scrutinized and heavily debated aspect of the agreement was the path forward on the use of fossil fuels, greenhouse gas emissions from which, the decision notes, have “unequivocally caused global warming of about 1.1 °C.”  Recognizing the need for deep, rapid, and sustained reductions in greenhouse gas emissions in line with 1.5 °C pathways, the decision calls on Parties to contribute to the following efforts related to the energy transition and fossil fuel use:
    • Tripling renewable energy capacity globally and doubling the global average annual rate of energy efficiency improvements by 2030;
    • Accelerating efforts towards the phase-down of unabated coal power;
    • Accelerating efforts globally towards net zero emission energy systems, utilizing zero- and low-carbon fuels well before or by around mid-century;
    • Transitioning away from fossil fuels in energy systems, in a just, orderly and equitable manner, accelerating action in this critical decade, so as to achieve net zero by 2050 in keeping with the science;”
    • Accelerating zero- and low-emission technologies, including, inter alia, renewables, nuclear, abatement and removal technologies such as carbon capture and utilization and storage, particularly in hard-to-abate sectors, and low-carbon hydrogen production;
    • Accelerating and substantially reducing non-carbon-dioxide emissions globally, including in particular methane emissions by 2030;
    • Accelerating the reduction of emissions from road transport on a range of pathways, including through development of infrastructure and rapid deployment of zero and low-emission vehicles; and
    • Phasing out inefficient fossil fuel subsidies that do not address energy poverty or just transitions, as soon as possible;
  • While coal has been mentioned in previous COP decisions, the language on “transitioning away from fossil fuels” represents the first time that countries have agreed to language that explicitly curtails all fossil fuels in the nearly three-decades-long history of the UN climate summit.  Though hailed by COP28 President Al Jaber and other world leaders as a “historic package to accelerate climate action,” the decision, and how it was adopted, was not without its critics.
    • UN Climate Change Executive Secretary Simon Stiell pushed the world to strive for more action.  “COP 28 also needed to signal a hard stop to humanity’s core climate problem—fossil fuels and their planet-burning pollution.  Whilst we didn’t turn the page on the fossil fuel era in Dubai, this outcome is the beginning of the end.”
    • Anne Rasmussen, lead delegate for Samoa, complained that delegates of the small island nation nations weren’t even in the room when President Al Jaber announced the deal was done.  Garnering the longest applause of the session, Rasmussen declared that “the course correction that is needed has not been secured” and that the deal could “potentially take us backward rather than forward.”

Continue Reading COP28 Final Negotiations Recap: A Global Agreement to Transition Away from Fossil Fuels

 What You Need to Know.

  • Azerbaijan is poised to host COP29 next year after receiving regional backing.  If formally confirmed, Azerbaijan’s COP Presidency would resolve months of deadlock.  It will also trigger criticism that next year’s COP will again be hosted by a nation heavily dependent on fossil fuel exports.
  • Brazil has been formally chosen to host COP30 in 2025.  The venue will be the city of Belém, located in the Amazon rainforest.  As Brazil’s Minister of the Environment and Climate Change, Marina Silva, commented: “With its immense biodiversity and vast territory threatened by climate change, the Amazon will show us the way.”
  • The UNFCCC has released a revised draft text of the negotiated outcome of the first Global Stocktake under the Paris Agreement.  The revised draft no longer mentions the “phase out” of fossil fuels and instead mentions the “substitution of unabated fossil fuels” and “tripling renewable energy capacity . . . by 2030.”
  • The inclusion of “phase out” language in the final agreement has been one of the yardsticks by which commentators have suggested the success or failure of COP28 should be measured.  Accordingly, the new draft was met by significant criticism, including by the European Union’s representatives who called elements of the text “unacceptable.”  Negotiations now center on finding a compromise, almost guaranteeing that discussions at COP28 will continue beyond the official close of the conference on Tuesday, December 12.
  • Following the official theme of the day, 154 nations signed the COP28 UAE Declaration on Sustainable Agriculture, Resilient Food Systems, and Climate Action.  The Declaration commits to “expedite the integration of agriculture and food systems into our climate action” and to “scaling-up adaptation and resilience activities and responses in order to reduce the vulnerability of all farmers, fisherfolk, and other food producers to the impacts of climate change.”  The contributions of the agriculture and forestry sectors, both as a source of emissions and as carbon sinks, are continuing to gain attention as an important part of the global efforts on climate change.

Continue Reading COP28 Day 10 Recap: Food in Focus, and a Look Ahead to COP29 and COP30

What You Need to Know. 

  • After a year of preparation and months of anticipation, the twenty-eighth annual United Nations Conference of Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP28) opened in Dubai on November 30, 2023.  Live and recorded coverage of the plenary sessions can be found on the UNFCCC COP28 website.
  • UN Climate Change Executive Secretary Simon Stiell opened the conference with a powerful call to action and reminder of what is at stake at COP28.  “Remember this.  Behind every line you work on.  Every word or comma you wrestle with here at COP.  There is a human being, a family, a community, that depends on you.  Turn the badge around your necks into a badge of honour, and a life belt for the millions of people you are working for.  Accelerate climate action.  Teach it to run.”
  • With a standing ovation from attendees, delegates approved the operationalization of a fund to assist developing countries in responding to economic and non-economic loss and damage associated with the adverse effects of climate change.  COP28 President Dr. Sultan Ahmed Al Jaber praised the approval of the loss and damage fund—the first time a decision has been adopted on the first day of any COP—as setting “a clear ambition for [delegates] to agree [to] a comprehensive, ambitious GST [Global Stocktake] decision over the next twelve days.”
  • The fund will initially be hosted by the World Bank for an interim period of four years, at which time an independent assessment of the World Bank’s performance as a host will be conducted.  World leaders must now nominate and appoint a board to operationalize the fund.  The UNFCCC also must formulate and post a final decision reflecting today’s approval.
  • Funding commitments for the loss and damage fund are mounting, with contributing countries facing a mix of peer pressure and political constraints.  National contribution pledges to date include: UAE ($100 million); UK ($51 million); US ($17.5 million); Japan ($10 million); European Union ($245 million, including $100 million pledged by Germany).

Continue Reading COP28 Day 1 Recap: A Call for Action and Historic Decision on Loss and Damage Funding

This note provides highlights of the UK’s recently released and remarkably sweeping Energy Security Bill.  If enacted, the Bill will have profound impacts on energy investments and the pace and scope of the energy transition in the UK.  Before detailing the Bill, some political context may be useful.

The Uxbridge Surprise

Boris Johnson’s resignation as

Two speeches by the EU Commission President, Ursula Von de Leyen in March and April 2023, set out the EU’s policy towards China. In late April, the UK Foreign Secretary set out the UK’s emerging strategy and on the same day earlier this month, a UK Government Committee released a report which heavily criticized the UK’s dealings with China and the German Government released its long-awaited (and much-redrafted) China Strategy. 

This blog looks at similarities between the three approaches and what conclusions we might draw about the implications.

EU China Strategy

The EU first labelled China a systemic rival in 2019.  Since then, the European Commission has promoted the idea of “de-risking” the bloc’s most sensitive economic sectors to limit their dependence on China.

In a powerful speech in March 2023 Commission President Ursula Von der Leyen set out the need for the EU to develop its China Strategy.  The new strategy was needed because of what she described as the hardening of China’s overall strategic posture, matched by human rights abuses at home and an increasingly assertive stance in Asia. She was careful to note that the EU’s position on China would depend on how China interacts with ‘Putin’s war’ and how China meets international human rights obligations.  President Von der Leyen labelled as deliberate Chinese policies of disinformation and economic and trade coercion, saying they were used to target ‘countries to ensure they comply and conform’.

The tone of President Von der Leyen’s speech was set against the EU’s assessment that a newly assertive China was moving from an era of ‘reform and opening’ to one of ‘security and control’ whose purpose was ‘a systemic change of the international order [to place] China at its centre’.  In her speech, The Commission President noted that ‘all companies in China…are…obliged … to assist state intelligence-gathering operations and to keep it secret’. President Von der Leyen concluded that Chinese focus on military, tech and economic security would increasingly trump the appeal of free markets and open trade.

However, President Von de Leyen made clear that the EU did not seek to ‘cut economic, societal, political or scientific ties’, but rather to ‘rebalance the relationship on the basis of transparency, predictability and reciprocity.’ Using language reminiscent of President Macron’s call for the EU to seek greater ‘strategic autonomy’, President Von der Leyen argued that the new relationship would require the EU’s economy and industry to be more competitive and resilient in the cyber and maritime, space and digital, defence, innovation, health, digital and clean-tech sectors. President Von der Leyen pointed to the Net-Zero Industry and the Critical Raw Materials Acts as examples of the EU’s determination to respond to Chinese domination of these critical sectors.Continue Reading China and Europe: De-Risking the Relationship

This week’s report by the World Meteorological Organisation makes for alarming reading.  The report warns there is a 66% likelihood of exceeding the 1.5°C threshold in at least one year between 2023 and 2027 and notes that such a rapid change in global temperatures will take the world into ‘uncharted territory’, with an anticipated El Nino weather system likely to push already high temperatures even higher this year.  Since we have already seen the impact of a 1.1°C rise, the conclusions of the WMO report are deeply uncomfortable.

This blog looks at some of the data which give context to the Report’s conclusions.

Gas

Russia is the world’s largest natural gas exporter; the second-largest exporter of crude oil; and the third-largest producer of crude oil.  The Russian invasion of Ukraine spooked global gas markets and pushed prices to record highs – the TTF European gas price peaked at a record €343/MWh in August (equivalent in oil terms to more than $500 a barrel).  But as world gas markets have adjusted, the price has fallen – €75 per megawatt hour at the end of December and under €50/MWh by the end of April 2023.

Like global markets, the EU has demonstrated remarkable agility in its response to Russia’s invasion. In 2020, Russia supplied nearly 43% of all EU energy imports. The EU set itself the target of reducing Russian gas imports to 55 bcm/year by March 2023 (down from 158 bcm in 2021).   At the time, this seemed ambitious, but in the event, the EU easily exceeded that target and, by October 2022, the EU’s Russian gas imports had fallen to 38 bcm (12 % of the EU’s energy consumption).

Last spring, the EU required that Member States’ winter storage be 90% full by the end of autumn.  Again, at the time, that seemed a tough ask in the face of global constraints on alternative supplies. But in any event, the EU easily exceed the target, reaching 96% by the beginning of November 2022.

A combination of factors means the outlook for the EU is more positive than expected:

  • A mild winter meant the EU emerged with record high gas inventories (EU storage was 56% full);
  • The success of demand-side efficiencies (the Commission set a cross-EU efficiency target of 15% reduction in demand: the EU reduced demand by an average 19%);
  • Global gas markets have been nimble in responding to EU demand for non-Russian gas.  New and alternative supplies flowed in from Norway, Qatar, the US and (importantly) Algeria through existing, but under-used pipelines and new LNG capacity;
  • The EU has built new LNG infrastructure at record speed – with Germany opening its first LNG jetty in November 2022.

Continue Reading The Climate Crisis