UK- EU

State Aid is on the Agenda: Deal or No Deal

6 October 2017 Professor Erika Szyszczak is a Research Professor in Law at the University of Sussex and a Fellow of UKTPO. She is currently the Special Adviser to the House of Lords Internal Market Sub-Committee in respect of its inquiry into Brexit: competition. She is the author of The Regulation of the State in Competitive Markets (Hart Pub. 2007) State aid issues are highly politicised. And for good reasons. Taxpayers’ money is being used in a selective manner, without any democratic input into its effective use. Competitors, at home and abroad, feel aggrieved that a firm is either obtaining an unfair advantage or being bailed out, where it cannot compete on the market. But State aid may be necessary to combat unusual situations, such as environmental disasters, or financial crises, or to buy time to rescue and restructure in order to save jobs and a local economy. It may be needed on an ongoing basis to provide public services. […]

By Nick Phipps|2017-10-06T10:12:08+01:006 October 2017|UK- EU|0 Comments

Boeing, Bombardier and Brexit: what does a North American trade dispute say about Brexit?

27 September 2017 Steve McGuire is Professor of Business and Public Policy and Head of the School of Business, Management and Economics at the University of Sussex. He is a Fellow of the UKTPO. As Bombardier is bombarded with a 220% tariff increase on exports to the US, the UK needs to wise up. There are two key points from the Boeing-Bombardier dispute that have implications for Brexit. First, leaving the European Union will not affect the sovereignty that national governments already have to dish out state aid for key industries. This will not change. Second, and this is the critical point, trade is bound up in broader political calculations. […]

By Nick Phipps|2017-09-27T15:59:33+01:0027 September 2017|UK - Non EU, UK- EU|4 Comments

Grandfathering Free Trade Agreements and Rules of Origin: What might appear bilateral is in fact trilateral!

27 September 2017 Dr Peter Holmes Reader in Economics and Dr Michael Gasiorek is Senior Lecturer in Economics at the University of Sussex and Director and Managing Director of InterAnalysis respectively. Both are Fellows of the UKTPO. With respect to the post-Brexit period, the UK needs to sort out its trade relationships not just with the EU but also with non-EU countries. In regard to the EU, Mrs May’s stated objective is for an “implementation” period during which “access to one another’s markets should continue on current terms”, such that “businesses and public services should only have to plan for one set of changes in the relationship between the UK and the EU”. However, for this to be possible, the UK will also have to deal with the relationship with non-EU countries. In this blog, we focus on an important aspect of Free Trade Agreements (FTA) which centres around something which is a bit technical and often not well understood – called “Rules of Origin” (RoOs).[1] […]

By Nick Phipps|2017-09-27T09:47:33+01:0027 September 2017|UK - Non EU, UK- EU|15 Comments

Transition Made Easy

26 September 2017, L. Alan Winters CB, Professor of Economics and Director of UKTPO. Dr Peter Holmes Reader in Economics at the University of Sussex and Fellow of the UKTPO, Erika Szyszczak is a Professor of Law at the University of Sussex, independent ADR Mediator and a Fellow of the UKTPO. Now it’s official. More than a year after the UKTPO said that it would be necessary (see Briefing Paper 2 and NIER paper), the Prime Minister has announced that the UK wants a transitional deal that preserves the status quo. Namely, membership of the Single market, a customs union with the EU, free mobility of labour, jurisdiction of the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU), budget payments and no external trade deals. Sad to say, this seems like progress. Despite the language and some of the press commentary, Britain is not ‘opting for’, still less ‘agreeing to’, a transitional deal; it is asking for one in the negotiations. The Florence speech still uses the language of an ‘implementation period’. This implies that between now and 2019 the UK can both negotiate a final settlement to be implemented after the transition and the transition itself. But the Prime Minister has made no [...]

By Nick Phipps|2017-09-26T16:45:04+01:0026 September 2017|UK- EU|5 Comments

The EU Regulatory Magnet: What Are the Consequences for the UK?

1st September 2017 Erika Szyszczak is a Professor of Law at the University of Sussex, independent ADR Mediator and a Fellow of the UKTPO. This week it was reported that the PM, Theresa May intends to “cut and paste” existing EU trade deals when forging a new trade policy for the UK. Today the EU-Ukraine Association Agreement (AA) officially came into force, although most of the provisions of the AA have been provisionally applied since 1 September 2014, with the trade provisions contained in the novel Deep and Comprehensive Free Trade Area (DCFTA), provisionally applied since 1 January 2016. The AA is a new model of external relations for the EU and it addresses matters beyond trade (cooperation in foreign and security policy, justice, freedom and security (including migration) taxation, public finance management, science and technology, education and information society). It is an innovative form of external action in offering a new type of economic integration without membership of the EU: an integration-oriented agreement. The new AA may reveal some lessons for the UK as it seeks new models of trade relationships. Indeed, the AA has already entered the consciousness of the wider public as a potential model for UK-EU trade [...]

By Nick Phipps|2017-09-01T17:07:42+01:001 September 2017|UK - Non EU, UK- EU|0 Comments

Government proposals on goods trade only cover first few weeks after Brexit

23 August 2017 Dr Peter Holmes Reader in Economics at the University of Sussex and Fellow of the UKTPO The government’s new paper “Continuity in the availability of goods for the EU and the UK – a position paper“ acknowledges the problems that will be created by a hard Brexit in which there is a disruption in the systems for verifying compliance with mandatory standards. The problem is that its substantive proposals deal with only the most immediate disruptions in the sale of goods that are already in the supply chain at the moment of Brexit. The official description acknowledges this: “This paper outlines the UK’s position on continuity in the availability of goods in UK and EU markets at the point of EU exit” (my italics). Yet, the key requirement for the British economy is that there needs to be a permanent system in place for ensuring that UK product inspection systems are recognised by the EU for goods made after Brexit. […]

By Nick Phipps|2017-08-23T15:30:50+01:0023 August 2017|UK- EU|3 Comments

The economic benefits of Brexit – revisited and rectified

21 August 2017 L. Alan Winters CB, Professor of Economics and Director of UKTPO. Economists for Free Trade (EfFT) are back, offering the Introduction to an unpublished – and hence unknown – report that claims £135 billion benefits from Brexit. It not only repeats the previous claim that GDP will increase by 4% if the UK adopts free trade, which I characterised as ‘doubly misleading’ in April, but it adds in an extra 2% from ‘improved regulation’, 0.6% from our net budget contribution to the EU and 0.2% from removing the ‘subsidy to unskilled immigration’. It also promises faster growth as well. I’ll come back to free trade, but, first, what regulations will be improved? We are not told. Similarly, what subsidy to immigration? Who knows? The budget contribution to the EU may be saved, but we will need to spend much of it on providing replacements for various EU regulatory bodies such as the European Medicines Agency, on negotiating new deals on things like airlines or nuclear isotopes, supporting farmers (which EfFT apparently accepts), on customs formalities on trade with the EU, on managing alleged unfair trade and on trade disputes, etc. Until we see the details, you have to [...]

By Nick Phipps|2017-08-21T13:44:40+01:0021 August 2017|UK - Non EU, UK- EU|2 Comments

The UK’s plan for post-Brexit customs is more hopeful than realistic

16 August 2017 Dr Peter Holmes Reader in Economics at the University of Sussex and Fellow of the UKTPO The UK government has just issued its official position paper on the issue of the customs union and Brexit. It emphasises a desire for the “most frictionless trade possible in goods between the UK and the EU” and proposes two ways of achieving this in the long term, while making it clear that the UK will leave the EU’s customs union when it leaves the EU. The first option it proposes is a “streamlined customs arrangement” which sounds like a form of free trade agreement (but there is no mention of this as an aim). It involves keeping in place a number of the existing customs arrangements and using (untested) electronic technology to ensure the smooth processing of all documentation. The stated aim is to keep border arrangements as close as possible to what they are now to maintain continuity for businesses. […]

By Nick Phipps|2017-08-16T12:25:23+01:0016 August 2017|UK- EU|2 Comments

The Customs Union: The Fiction of ‘Frictionless’ Trade

14 August 2017 After Brexit, the UK will have to leave the EU Customs Union (CU) and become a legally separate customs territory. It might then, however, seek to create a new Customs Union with the EU to cover their mutual trade. The UK Trade Policy Observatory at the University of Sussex (UKTPO) has produced this short animated video that explains what this entails, and what kind of an agreement the UK and the EU would need to establish in order to achieve the same level of trade costs as we have now. Ultimately, the video explains, a Customs Union will not produce ‘frictionless’ trade without re-creating several aspects of current EU membership. With Brexit negotiations already underway, it emphasises that maintaining a customs union is just one part of the story; and not, by itself, the be all and end all for achieving a smooth trading process. https://vimeo.com/229297381 Republishing guidelines The UK Trade Policy Observatory believes in the free flow of information and encourages readers to cite our materials, providing due acknowledgement. For online use, this should be a link to he original resource on the our website. We do not however, publish under a Creative Commons license. This means you CANNOT [...]

By Nick Phipps|2017-08-14T11:00:37+01:0014 August 2017|UK- EU|4 Comments

The EU referendum – one year on, and back at square one?

23 June 2017 L. Alan Winters CB, Professor of Economics and Director of UKTPO and Ilona Serwicka, Research Fellow at UKTPO One year ago the British people voted to leave the EU. Out of 33.5 million votes cast, 51.9 per cent were for ‘leave’, albeit in the absence of any statement about what ‘leaving’ might mean. The government is still vague about what the UK’s post-Brexit trade policy should be – even after triggering the formal leave process – but the general election has pressured Theresa May to soften her Brexit stance. Even though Brexit negotiations are now formally under way, the options suddenly again seem wide open for debate. In terms of options the UK is back at square one, but following a year’s analysis, it is now clearer what these options amount to. Over the year, the UK Trade Policy Observatory (UKTPO) has discussed many of the options and this note draws on some of that analysis to try to light the path forward. […]

By Nick Phipps|2017-06-23T09:23:51+01:0023 June 2017|UK - Non EU, UK- EU|1 Comment

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