Article 50

Fifty Ways to Leave your Lover: the Long Goodbye

11 April 2019 Erika Szyszczak is Professor of Law at the University of Sussex and a fellow of UKTPO. Tempting as it is to work through the lyrics of the Paul Simon song,* the latest round of Brexit talks between the UK and the EU are already translating into the movie: The Long Goodbye. By a Decision adopted on 11 April 2019, the European Council – under the patient and saintly leadership of Donald Tusk – agreed to grant the UK a second extension to Article 50 TEU either until 31 October 2019, or, an earlier date (if the Withdrawal Agreement is ratified) or until 31 May 2019 if the UK fails to hold elections to the European Parliament. The UK has in fact put in place an Order to facilitate the organisation of the elections to the European Parliament. […]

By Nick Phipps|2019-04-12T09:34:50+01:0012 April 2019|UK- EU|1 Comment

Magic realists and economic realists

15 December 2017 Alasdair Smith is an Emeritus Professor of Economics at the University of Sussex, and is a member of the UK Trade Policy Observatory. The deal done on Friday December 8 in the Brexit negotiations has already been subject to conflicting interpretations. The UK has committed to having no hard border in Ireland, and committed in terms which seem to admit no rowing back. […]

By Nick Phipps|2017-12-15T17:46:28+00:0015 December 2017|UK- EU|8 Comments

With Brexit less than 500 days away, enshrining the Brexit date into law will not provide certainty that consumers and businesses really need.

16 November 207 Ilona Serwicka is Research Fellow in the Economics of Brexit at the UKTPO. The European Chief Negotiator for Brexit, Michel Barnier, has recently confirmed that the UK will cease to be a member of the EU at midnight (Brussels time) on 29 March 2019. This means that we are now less than 500 days and under 350 working days away from the Brexit date. More time has already passed since the United Kingdom voted to leave the European Union on 23 June 2016. […]

By Nick Phipps|2017-11-16T16:22:07+00:0016 November 2017|UK- EU|1 Comment

Groundhog day: Is the Government White Paper on trade and Customs Bill a step forward?

11 October 2017 Dr Michael Gasiorek is Senior Lecturer in Economics at the University of Sussex and Director and Managing Director of InterAnalysis Reading the Government’s White Paper on trade, and the Customs Bill on future customs arrangements, together with Monday’s statement from the Prime Minister seemed like a Groundhog day moment. In other words, this is somewhere we have been before – repeatedly. […]

By Nick Phipps|2017-10-11T10:33:01+01:0011 October 2017|UK- EU|3 Comments

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

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

Brexit: hard truths and hard choices

19 June 2017 Alasdair Smith is an Emeritus Professor of Economics at the University of Sussex, and is a member of the UK Trade Policy Observatory. It’s now 12 months since the referendum decision, 3 months since the Article 50 notification, and only 21 months until the date on which the UK is due to exit the EU. Brexit negotiations start today, but most politicians have still not progressed beyond the stage of wishful thinking. There are ambiguities about the objectives of both the large political parties but each seems to want some kind of free trade agreement (FTA) with the EU after Brexit, often described by a phrase like ‘tariff-free access to the single market’. Behind such inherently confused terminology lies an apparent wish to have a ‘deep’ FTA; that is to say, a UK-EU FTA which has no tariffs and sufficient regulatory convergence between the UK and the EU that many of the non-tariff advantages of the single market are retained. Here’s the first hard truth: a deep UK-EU FTA cannot be negotiated in 21 months. Even much weaker agreements take longer, especially if the political and technical ground has not been prepared in advance, so it’s not [...]

By Nick Phipps|2017-06-19T12:11:42+01:0019 June 2017|UK- EU|6 Comments

What do the General Election Manifestos say about International Trade? Green Party

24 May 2017 Compiled by Fellows of UKTPO Brexit will leave many areas of UK policy open to change. International trade policy is among the most important of these for UK prosperity and also among the most immediate because the status quo cannot simply be extended. This is the fourth in a series of blogs reporting what the major political parties say about trade policy in their 2017 manifestos, as they become available. The UK Trade Policy Observatory (UKTPO) has set out a series of issues that it believes should be considered in any election manifesto that might form the basis of the UK’s future trade policy. The table below checks whether or not the Green Party Manifesto mentions these important elements explicitly or implicitly. Following that we offer a brief commentary on the treatment of trade policy in the manifesto. A central aim of the Green Party is for the UK to remain in the EU, or at least in the single market. The former implies no change to current trade policies and hence little need to discuss them in the manifesto. Thus their coverage of trade policy beyond that with the EU is restricted to human rights and [...]

By Nick Phipps|2017-05-24T10:02:52+01:0024 May 2017|UK - Non EU, UK- EU|0 Comments

What do the General Election Manifestos say about International Trade? The Conservatives

19 May 2017 Compiled by Fellows of UKTPO Brexit will leave many areas of UK policy open to change. International trade policy is among the most important of these for UK prosperity and also among the most immediate because the status quo cannot simply be extended. This is the third in a series of blogs reporting what the major political parties say about trade policy in their 2017 manifestos, as they become available. The UK Trade Policy Observatory (UKTPO) has set out a series of issues that it believes should be considered in any election manifesto that might form the basis of the UK’s future trade policy. The table below checks whether or not the Conservative Manifesto mentions these important elements explicitly or implicitly. Following that we offer a brief commentary on the treatment of trade policy in the manifesto. […]

By Nick Phipps|2017-05-19T14:05:05+01:0019 May 2017|UK - Non EU, UK- EU|0 Comments

‘With or without EU’ – priorities for the UK’s four trading nations post Brexit

29 March 2017 New analysis shows that the nations of the UK are exposed to trade with the EU in quite different ways. If the UK leaves the EU without a trade deal the effects across regions will be quite different and this should therefore influence our trading priorities Our Fellows have analysed trade data to examine the regional and sectoral impact of Brexit as well as the overall national impact. Their findings, portrayed in a short video animation show that choosing trade priorities on the basis of aggregate UK data does not take into account the fact that the nations within the UK are exposed to trade with the EU in different ways. https://youtu.be/3uyf9sU__XQ […]

By Nick Phipps|2017-03-29T13:27:19+01:0029 March 2017|UK - Non EU, UK- EU|0 Comments

Partners