Sinking feeling…
British ports and shipping companies will need at least three years to set up a new customs system in the event of a no-deal Brexit, the industry has warned in an appeal to the EU and the UK to thrash out an agreement based on the Prime Minister’s trade blueprint.
Last year, the EU bloc (including the UK) exported £58 billion worth of goods and £28 billion of services to Japan. On 6 July, 2018 the EU bloc and Japan finally signed the Ue-japan Economic Partnership Agreement. This Free Trade Agreement will have 650 million consumers who generate almost onethird of the world’s Gross Domestic Product. The Eu-japan EPA is the only deal in Brussels.
Samuelcoldstream And when we have Brexit we have to make our own agreement with that market, and the terms will be less favourable for us. Brilliant. That was pointed to from Day 1 as an example of the benefits of being in the EU but no, we’re apparently much better out of the world’s second largest trading bloc that is “in decline”.
Dunnomuch That’s an ongoing trend. The share of our trade that is taken by the EU has been falling for many years. Germany experiences exactly the same, most German trade is now outside the EU.
Euan Gray
I see many people are still clinging to the idea that it will all be sorted because of the “they need us more than we need them” myth. If it was true it would have been sorted already.
Kampunghighlander
I think that if a huge chunk of German and French exports are threatened a solution will be found pretty quickly.
Will Sylvander Take the time to get the customs system right. Britain will still be here and our European trading partners will be there long after the European Union is dead and buried.
High Dudgeon The reason we don’t have any arrangements in place after two years since the vote is really quite simple: the corporations and the bankers have engineered Brexit to fail. The EU is a neo-liberal corporate autocracy that controls us and our institutions. We cannot just “leave” the EU. It isn’t a democracy. We aren’t allowed to leave the EU, and you have to be staggeringly naive to believe that we can vote to.
Hugh_oxford So, two years since the referendum, and only now are they talking about a contingency plan? How do we trade with other non-eu countries at the moment? The blueprint is there.
Pete’s Dragon