Last week’s UK government paper on Irish border issues arising from Brexit included the following: “It is particularly important to note the integrated nature of the agri food sector. Food, beverages and tobacco account for 49% of cross-border manufacturing trade, with, for example, more than 10,000 pigs exported from Ireland to Northern Ireland every week and a quarter of all milk produced on Northern Ireland’s farms exported for processing in Ireland.”
The paper goes on to promise that there will be neither customs posts nor immigration checks on the northern side of the border.
It is simply not clear how an invisible border can be achieved after British withdrawal from the customs union – which is inevitable on 29 March 2019 – since only EU members are in the customs union, and the withdrawal from the single market, to which the UK government and the Labour opposition are fully committed.
There are suspicions that the UK government is seeking to create a situation where any barriers can be blamed on the EU or on the Republic. These suspicions arise from the phrasing of the next paragraphs in the UK paper.
“However, [the UK government] recognises that unilateral flexibility is insufficient to deliver UK objectives on the border. The UK must reach an agreement with the EU in order to ensure that the Irish side of the land border, which is subject to relevant EU regulations, is also as seamless and frictionless as possible ... The UK also notes that there are a number of examples of where the EU has set aside the normal regulations and codes set out in EU law in order to recognise the circumstances of certain border areas.”
Getting your retaliation in first
This is called getting your retaliation in first. The British side will seek to deliver the frictionless border through dint of its magnanimous “unilateral flexibility” but the EU will have to “set aside the normal regulations and codes set out in EU law”.
When it proves impossible or illegal to do so, this will be the fault of the EU, the Irish, or both. The UK position constitutes, on this interpretation, the first instalment in the inevitable blame game as the Conservative Party’s strategy unravels. This strategy was neatly summarised by the University of London historian Vernon Bogdanor in The Observer newspaper on Sunday as “a soft landing from a hard Brexit”.
He notes that no such soft landing is possible, the conclusion of just about all European commentators on the latest UK negotiating documents.
The Brexiteer wing of the Tory party continues to call the tune and does not propose to accept responsibility as reality intrudes
The Brexiteer wing of the Tory party continues to call the tune and does not propose to accept responsibility as reality intrudes. The foundation phase of the blame game consists of aspirational schemes that would somehow see a hard Brexit, outside both single market and customs union, without any downsides.
Any adverse consequences are somehow avoidable with adequate concessions to our flexible British friends and will only arise through European intransigence.
There will be border checks in Ireland, to be enforced from the EU side, unless the UK continues to exclude non-compliant food products and to comply with current veterinary and animal health standards.
This is how the UK position paper addresses the issue:
“One option for achieving our objectives could be regulatory equivalence on agri food measures, where the UK and the EU agree to achieve the same outcome and high standards, with scope for flexibility in relation to the method for achieving this ... Providing the UK and the EU could reach a sufficiently deep agreement, this approach could ensure that there would be no requirement for any SPS (Sanitary and Phytosanitary) or related checks for agri food products at the border between Northern Ireland and Ireland.”
Unanswered questions
This highly conditional statement settles nothing. The list of unanswered questions is a long one. Will chlorinated chickens, hormone-fed beef and genetically modified crops be admitted to the UK under a future trade deal with the United States?
If so, there will need to be customs posts on the southern side of the border to preserve Irish compliance with the current European standards. If not, has the UK government accepted that any trade deal with the United States (a “super” deal is possible according to Donald Trump) will exclude food and agriculture? Will the tripartite agreement in the thoroughbred industry involving Ireland, Britain and France be maintained?
The great prize for quitting the customs union, according to Brexiteers, is the prospect of new trade deals outside Europe, of which a deal with the US would be the biggest. But worldwide tariffs on manufactured goods are already low or zero: with or without access for US agriculture, it is doubtful that a protectionist America will offer anything worthwhile to post-Brexit UK.
Quitting the customs union delivers nebulous gains for the UK at serious cost to others, including a hard border in Ireland.
Read more
Full coverage: Brexit
Last week’s UK government paper on Irish border issues arising from Brexit included the following: “It is particularly important to note the integrated nature of the agri food sector. Food, beverages and tobacco account for 49% of cross-border manufacturing trade, with, for example, more than 10,000 pigs exported from Ireland to Northern Ireland every week and a quarter of all milk produced on Northern Ireland’s farms exported for processing in Ireland.”
The paper goes on to promise that there will be neither customs posts nor immigration checks on the northern side of the border.
It is simply not clear how an invisible border can be achieved after British withdrawal from the customs union – which is inevitable on 29 March 2019 – since only EU members are in the customs union, and the withdrawal from the single market, to which the UK government and the Labour opposition are fully committed.
There are suspicions that the UK government is seeking to create a situation where any barriers can be blamed on the EU or on the Republic. These suspicions arise from the phrasing of the next paragraphs in the UK paper.
“However, [the UK government] recognises that unilateral flexibility is insufficient to deliver UK objectives on the border. The UK must reach an agreement with the EU in order to ensure that the Irish side of the land border, which is subject to relevant EU regulations, is also as seamless and frictionless as possible ... The UK also notes that there are a number of examples of where the EU has set aside the normal regulations and codes set out in EU law in order to recognise the circumstances of certain border areas.”
Getting your retaliation in first
This is called getting your retaliation in first. The British side will seek to deliver the frictionless border through dint of its magnanimous “unilateral flexibility” but the EU will have to “set aside the normal regulations and codes set out in EU law”.
When it proves impossible or illegal to do so, this will be the fault of the EU, the Irish, or both. The UK position constitutes, on this interpretation, the first instalment in the inevitable blame game as the Conservative Party’s strategy unravels. This strategy was neatly summarised by the University of London historian Vernon Bogdanor in The Observer newspaper on Sunday as “a soft landing from a hard Brexit”.
He notes that no such soft landing is possible, the conclusion of just about all European commentators on the latest UK negotiating documents.
The Brexiteer wing of the Tory party continues to call the tune and does not propose to accept responsibility as reality intrudes
The Brexiteer wing of the Tory party continues to call the tune and does not propose to accept responsibility as reality intrudes. The foundation phase of the blame game consists of aspirational schemes that would somehow see a hard Brexit, outside both single market and customs union, without any downsides.
Any adverse consequences are somehow avoidable with adequate concessions to our flexible British friends and will only arise through European intransigence.
There will be border checks in Ireland, to be enforced from the EU side, unless the UK continues to exclude non-compliant food products and to comply with current veterinary and animal health standards.
This is how the UK position paper addresses the issue:
“One option for achieving our objectives could be regulatory equivalence on agri food measures, where the UK and the EU agree to achieve the same outcome and high standards, with scope for flexibility in relation to the method for achieving this ... Providing the UK and the EU could reach a sufficiently deep agreement, this approach could ensure that there would be no requirement for any SPS (Sanitary and Phytosanitary) or related checks for agri food products at the border between Northern Ireland and Ireland.”
Unanswered questions
This highly conditional statement settles nothing. The list of unanswered questions is a long one. Will chlorinated chickens, hormone-fed beef and genetically modified crops be admitted to the UK under a future trade deal with the United States?
If so, there will need to be customs posts on the southern side of the border to preserve Irish compliance with the current European standards. If not, has the UK government accepted that any trade deal with the United States (a “super” deal is possible according to Donald Trump) will exclude food and agriculture? Will the tripartite agreement in the thoroughbred industry involving Ireland, Britain and France be maintained?
The great prize for quitting the customs union, according to Brexiteers, is the prospect of new trade deals outside Europe, of which a deal with the US would be the biggest. But worldwide tariffs on manufactured goods are already low or zero: with or without access for US agriculture, it is doubtful that a protectionist America will offer anything worthwhile to post-Brexit UK.
Quitting the customs union delivers nebulous gains for the UK at serious cost to others, including a hard border in Ireland.
Read more
Full coverage: Brexit
SHARING OPTIONS