There is no doubt that if you currently rely on Europe to either source products and services for your business, or indeed sell them to Europe, you must now start planning in earnest for the worst-case scenarios. For example, how would your business cope if it had to cope with trade tariffs if we ended up with only World Trade Organisation access? This is a real possibility, given that Theresa May and her closest advisors are sticking to ‘no deal is better than a bad deal’ position.
Recently, I penned The Soap Box column, covering for David Catanach of the BSGA while he sunned himself on holiday, and it is fair to say I did not pulled any punches on the subject above.
The first and biggest chasm for us to cross is that at the moment we cannot even agree with the EU where to start. Our team want to discuss a trade deal from the outset, but the EU team are steadfast that it must be the terms of our divorce that must have ‘significant progress made on it’ first.
The result is that we will need to prepare ourselves that the outcome from the next year of negotiations will no doubt be a half-way house of transitional arrangements, while we get locked into a very protracted argument with Brussel”
On this point of ‘progress’ there are also three main stumbling blocks. The first is EU citizen rights in the UK and vice versa. The EU are demanding its citizens should have protection of the European Court of Justice in the UK, giving them more rights in the UK than its own citizens—a red line for the Government.
The second is avoiding a hard border with Ireland, and the third is the ‘divorce payment’.
The result is that we will need to prepare ourselves that the outcome from the next year of negotiations will no doubt be a half-way house of transitional arrangements, while we get locked into a very protracted argument with Brussels.