We’ll put VAT on EU goods if Brussels bars trade deal
Davis threat to get tough if we don’t get our way over duties
BRITAIN yesterday threatened to impose customs duties and VAT on all goods coming from Europe if the EU blocks a trade deal.
Brexit Secretary David Davis warned Brussels it would suffer if trade is disrupted as EU countries sell 60billion euros more in goods and services to us than we do to them.
Ministers set out post-Brexit plans that would allow lorries to clear customs checks at Channel ports within seconds thanks to an online borders system and number-plate recognition technology.
However, they said MPs and peers will legislate to impose new customs duties and VAT tariffs on trade with the EU, in case no Brexit deal can be agreed by March 2019.
In the first of 12 documents setting out its negotiating position, the Government said that if there is no deal, ‘the UK would treat trade with the EU as it currently treats trade with non-EU countries’.
‘Customs duty and import VAT would be due on EU imports,’ it said. ‘Traders would need to be registered. Traders exporting to the EU would have to submit an exploration declaration, and certain goods may require an export licence.’
But the document said it hoped for a deal with the EU and set out two customs options – a streamlined customs arrangement or a new customs partnership.
Under the first proposal, Britain and the EU would use technology to help goods pass speedily through ports.
Mr Davis said they would replicate techniques used for products coming from outside the EU, which ‘get 90 per cent of containers through in a matter of seconds’.
Companies would fill out customs declarations using an online system in advance, with numberplate recognition allowing vehicles could be waved straight through. Spot checks would affect only a small proportion of lorries. The second proposal, for a new customs partnership, would see the EU’s customs rules mirrored by the UK so that ‘all goods entering the EU via the UK have paid the correct EU duties’.
‘This would remove the need for the UK and the EU to introduce customs processes between us, so that goods moving between the UK and the EU would be treated as they are now for customs purposes,’ the document said.
Holidaymakers would face no extra checks under either option, the Government said, and people on ‘booze cruises’ to France would not be affected.
Brussels yesterday said it would not begin discussing the UK’s proposals for customs until more progress is made in negotiations on the Brexit divorce bill.
However, Mr Davis reminded EU countries it was in their interest to reach a mutually beneficial arrangement. ‘We have been talking across Europe to a number of people about the advantages to them,’ he told BBC Breakfast.
‘We sell about 230billion euros of good and services to the EU each year, they sell 290billion to us. I was in Bavaria only two or three weeks ago. They sell BMWs, they sell agricultural produce, they sell electronic goods. They have got an incredibly strong interest in something like this, so there is an interest on both sides of not doing each other harm.’
Michel Barnier, the EU’s chief Brexit negotiator, tweeted: ‘The quicker the UK and EU27 agree on citizens, settling accounts and Ireland, the quicker we can discuss customs and future relationship.’
A European Commission spokesman said: ‘We take note of the UK’s request for an implementing period and its preferences as regards the future relationship, but we will only address them once we have made sufficient
‘In their interest to reach a deal’
progress on the terms of the orderly withdrawal.
‘An agreement on a future relationship between the EU and the UK can only be finalised once the UK has become a third country … frictionless trade is not possible outside the single market and customs union.’
Guy Verhofstadt, the European Parliament’s chief Brexit co-ordinator, wrote on Twitter: ‘To be in and out of the customs union and [have] “invisible borders” is a fantasy. First need to secure citizens’ rights and a financial settlement.’
Mr Davis said he did not expect the Brexit divorce bill to be agreed this year.
FIRST Remoaners accused ministers of dragging their heels over setting out detailed plans for Brexit. Now, as the first of up to a dozen position papers are published, they attack them for rushing the documents through with unseemly haste. They can’t have it both ways.
As our negotiators’ stance becomes increasingly clear – and refreshingly robust, with threats of reprisals if the EU seeks to punish us for leaving the club – it’s the Remoaners who are in a hopeless muddle.