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Trouble Ahead for post-Brexit Trade with the UK?

24 May 2018

Professor Erika Szyszczak is a Professor of Law at the University of Sussex and is a member of the UK Trade Policy Observatory.

If, and when the UK is able to agree a new trade relationship with the EU it will be negotiating within a new EU approach to conducting trade agreements. This will have consequences for the type of agreement(s) the UK is able to negotiate with the EU, as well as the replication of any trade agreements negotiated by the EU and the rest of the world before the full Brexit process is finalised. (more…)

May 24th, 2018

Posted In: UK- EU

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22 May 2018

Alasdair Smith is an Emeritus Professor of Economics at the University of Sussex and is a member of the UK Trade Policy Observatory.

Not before time, the UK government is giving attention to the ‘backstop’ provision which will be written into the Withdrawal Agreement for Brexit to avoid a hard border in Ireland.  But rather than focussing on how to sell this politically in the UK, the government needs to address the more pressing question of whether the European Union (EU) will agree to the UK’s preferred version of the backstop. (more…)

May 22nd, 2018

Posted In: UK- EU

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18 May 2018

Julia Magntorn is Research Officer in Economics at the UKTPO.

While Theresa May and her cabinet are trying to agree on whether to back the maximum facilitation proposal or the customs partnership, another option, nicknamed the ‘Norway option’ which would see the UK remaining a member of the European Economic Area (EEA), has made a comeback in the Brexit debate. (more…)

May 18th, 2018

Posted In: UK- EU

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17 May 2018

Dr Michael Gasiorek is Senior Lecturer in Economics and Dr Peter Holmes is Reader in Economics at the University of Sussex. They are both Fellows of the UKTPO and Managing Director and Director of InterAnalysis respectively. 

The government’s two preferred options for post-Brexit trade with the EU are “Maximum Facilitation” whereby technological solutions are used to simplify trade procedures, and a so-called “New Customs Partnership”.

This blog discusses the implications of the New Customs Partnership (NCP) scheme. It must be borne in mind that the EU has so far rejected both and that in fact the degree of detail currently provided by the Government on either is so slight that we cannot be sure what is proposed. It is also arguable that they are not alternatives since under any scenario the government is keen to ensure the maximum simplification of procedures in order for trade to be ‘as frictionless as possible’. Even if they were viable, both the NCP and the Max Fac proposals involve significant trade-offs – namely that they involve firms in expensive set-up costs in order to be able to reduce transactions costs. (more…)

May 17th, 2018

Posted In: UK- EU

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2 May 2018

Dr Michael Gasiorek is Senior Lecturer in Economics at the University of Sussex and Managing Director of InterAnalysis. He is a Fellow of the UKTPO.

The red lines laid down by the UK government, and those laid down by the EU, together with the agreement that there will be no ‘hard’ border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland are mutually incompatible. This was discussed in some detail in our March 2018 Briefing Paper UK-EU trade relations post-Brexit: binding constraints and impossible solutions. In that Briefing Paper, we concluded that: “The current set of the UK government’s overlapping conditions or constraints cannot be reconciled. The solution space appears to be null. The only way of resolving this is to drop and/or relax at least one or more of the conditions.” (more…)

May 2nd, 2018

Posted In: UK - Non EU

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Photo of Emily Lydgate2 May 2018

Dr Emily Lydgate is a lecturer in Law at the University of Sussex and a fellow of the UK Trade Policy Observatory and Dr Rob Amos is a Research Fellow in Law, Sussex Sustainability Research Programme, University of Sussex. Rob is conducting a project on Sustainable Trade Post-Brexit in collaboration with the UK Trade Policy Observatory.

If the UK is going to live up to its commitments to ‘Green Brexit’, climate change mitigation and the UN Sustainable Development Goals, the UK should develop its own Sustainability Impact Assessments framework to minimise negative impacts and maximise benefits of future trade agreements. (more…)

May 2nd, 2018

Posted In: UK - Non EU, UK- EU

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1 May 2018

Ilona Serwicka is Research Fellow in the economics of Brexit and Charlotte Humma is the Business Manager at the UKTPO.

As the European Union (EU) Withdrawal Bill and the Trade Bill progress through parliament, forming a customs union with the EU has become a key issue. On 18 April 2018, the House of Lords voted to keep open the option of staying in a Customs Union after Brexit, promptly followed by the UK Government reaffirming its intention neither to remain in the EU Customs Union nor to seek to form a new one.

So where does this leave us? (more…)

May 1st, 2018

Posted In: UK- EU

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