01 October 2018
Dr Ingo Borchert is Senior Lecturer in Economics, and Dr Peter Holmes is a Reader in Economics, both are fellows of the UK Trade Policy Observatory.
The UK Government is currently proposing to the EU, broadly speaking, to adopt a common rulebook for goods. By contrast, not much if anything is sought in the realm of services, let alone movement of people or other areas of the Single Market. Part of the EU’s response has been that goods and services are so interlinked that one cannot have a goods only single market. Is this response just posturing as part of the negotiations process, or are there real issues with separating goods and services? (more…)
Charlotte Humma October 1st, 2018
Posted In: UK- EU
Tags: Chequers Agreement, goods, Irish border, Northern Ireland, Services, Single Market
27 July 2018
Dr Emily Lydgate is a lecturer in Law at the University of Sussex and a fellow of the UK Trade Policy Observatory.
The July UK White Paper on the future relationship with the EU calls for a ‘common rule-book’ for goods. This has sometimes been shorthanded as a proposal for a Single Market for goods (in contrast to services, which departs more dramatically from the status quo).[1]
But the scope of regulation the UK proposes should fall within this ‘common rulebook’ is narrower than what would be covered in a Single Market for goods – as the EEA Agreement demonstrates. It’s narrower even than that covered by the EU-Ukraine DCFTA Agreement.
So what does the common rule-book cover – and how might this match up with the EU’s regulatory ‘ask’ of the UK? (more…)
Charlotte Humma July 27th, 2018
Posted In: UK- EU
Tags: Common rule book, Environment, food safety, labour rules, Northern Ireland, Regulations, taxation, White Paper
9 July 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.
In good part, the answer depends on the extent to which this agreement moves on from the Government’s previous position, is feasible, is credible, and is acceptable to the EU. It also depends on whether it will be acceptable to the Conservative party, which the resignations of David Davis and Boris Johnson throw into serious doubt.
In this blog, I focus on one aspect of this – the extent to which the “facilitated customs arrangement” (FCA), which is central to the agreement notionally reached at Chequers, is substantively different from the previous idea of a “New Customs Partnership” (NCP). (more…)
Charlotte Humma July 10th, 2018
Posted In: UK- EU
Tags: Chequers Agreement, Customs Union, Free Trade Agreement, Northern Ireland, Rules of Origin, Single Market, tariffs
11 June 2018
Alasdair Smith is an Emeritus Professor of Economics and Dr Peter Holmes is Reader in Economics at the University of Sussex. They are both Fellows of the UK Trade Policy Observatory.
On June 7, after prolonged internal discussion, the UK government published its paper proposing the extension to the whole UK of the ‘backstop’ provision in the EU draft withdrawal agreement to incorporate Northern Ireland (NI) into the EU’s customs territory until another solution can be found for the problem of the Irish border. The UK is unenthusiastic about the backstop and hopes it will not be needed, but wants any backstop to cover the whole UK, so as to avoid the need for border inspections of trade between NI and the rest of the UK (GB). Perhaps surprisingly, the government paper does not address the fact that the EU’s proposal is for NI to be included in a ‘common regulatory area’ as well as in a de facto customs union: any backstop needs to deal with regulation as well as customs. (more…)
Charlotte Humma June 11th, 2018
Posted In: UK- EU
Tags: common regulatory area, Customs, Irish border, Northern Ireland, regulation, Uk-wide backstop, withdrawal agreement
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…)
Charlotte Humma May 22nd, 2018
Posted In: UK- EU
Tags: Customs Union, Europe Union, freedom of movement, Goods only single market, Irish border, Northern Ireland, regulatory alignment, Uk-wide backstop, withdrawal agreement
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…)
Charlotte Humma May 2nd, 2018
Posted In: UK - Non EU
19 April 2018
Jim Rollo is Deputy Director of UKTPO, Emeritus Professor of European Economics at the University of Sussex and Associate Fellow, Chatham House. Dr Peter Holmes Reader in Economics at the University of Sussex and Fellow of the UKTPO.
On Wednesday this week, the House of Lords voted that after Brexit a customs union with the EU should not be ruled out. If it remains in the legislation, it would require the government to submit a report to Parliament on the Customs Union option. This blog discusses some of the key issues that would need to be considered in such a report. (more…)
Charlotte Humma April 19th, 2018
Posted In: UK- EU
Tags: Common external tariff, Customs Union, Europe Union, Northern Ireland, tariffs, Withdrawal Bill
26 March 2018
Ilona Serwicka is Research Fellow in the economics of Brexit at the UKTPO
The UK economy will be worse off after Brexit regardless of the terms of departure from the EU: this is (with a small number of exceptions) a consensus reached by previous analyses of the impact of Brexit. Anything that differs from the status quo of EU membership – ranging from a ‘soft’ Brexit that involves staying within the Customs Union and/or the Single Market to a ‘hard’ scenario of leaving the EU with no deal – will hurt growth prospects for the UK economy. (more…)
Charlotte Humma March 26th, 2018
Posted In: UK - Non EU, UK- EU
Tags: Free Trade Agreement, manufacturing, MFN, Northern Ireland, Regions, tariffs, Trade agreements
7 December 2017
Dr Emily Lydgate is a lecturer in Law at the University of Sussex and a fellow of the UK Trade Policy Observatory.
How can the UK uphold its commitment to leaving the EU Single Market and Customs Union while also preserving the invisible intra-Irish border? Leaving aside crucial questions of political feasibility, this post looks at some of the options and their trade and border implications. Notably, there are limits to ‘flexible and creative’ solutions that involve turning a blind eye to customs and regulatory checks solely on the intra-Irish border: trade rules leave little room for such ad hoc approaches. (more…)
Charlotte Humma December 7th, 2017
Posted In: UK- EU
Tags: border checks, Customs Union, Irish border, MFN, Northern Ireland, regulatory alignement, regulatory divergence, Single Market, tariffs, WTO
