Response to Brexit White Paper: ‘full of wishes but light on detail’
2 February 2017 Dr Michael Gasiorek, senior Lecturer in Economics, Managing Director of InterAnalysis, and member of UKTPO responds to the United Kingdom’s exit from and new partnership with the European Union White Paper. My top line response to the White Paper is that it is full of wishes and hopes, but there is very little specific detail in there. No doubt this is in part because the government would argue that it does not want to give too much away so as to strengthen their hand in the negotiations, but also because some of the problems are somewhat intractable, (eg. CTA and Ireland) and finally, because the government probably does not yet know itself. Specifically, on trade, there really is almost nothing new in the White Paper. One can exegetically examine the wording to see if there are any new insights but these are hard to find. I thought it was interesting how much work had gone into discussing dispute resolution, and wonder whether it suggests any view regarding the likelihood of future disputes? […]