This is a subscriber-only article
After the initial shock of yesterday’s vote by the UK to leave the EU, many are now setting about the task of trying to figure out how a Brexit will work and what the long-term relationship of the UK with the EU will look like.
According to Alan Matthews, professor emeritus of European agricultural policy in the department of economics at Trinity College Dublin, the long-term interests of the EU lie in maintaining strong trading ties with the UK.
In a blog post following the UK vote, Matthews said: “The EU’s long-term interest lies in maintaining as much mobility of goods, services, capital and people as is possible. Any future trade arrangement should not re-erect tariff barriers.”
He added that outside the single European market, the UK would inevitably develop its own new rules and regulations which will differ from the EU but the two sides would have to work to overcome these differences.
Farmer frustrations
From an agricultural perspective, farmers in the UK voted more than two to one for a Brexit. And while this could be attributed to the majority of UK farmers being in the older age group (older people in the UK tended to vote leave), Matthews believes this could also be down to “gripes” held by UK farmers over CAP regulations, environmental rules and restrictions on the use of chemicals.
“The UK Rural Payments Agency has been notoriously poor in disbursing farm payments, and had to revert to paper claims last year when its IT systems did not prove up to the task of managing the transition to the new CAP,” added Matthews.
He said many UK farmers have become annoyed with what they see as the excessively politicised nature of EU decision-making across a range of issues such as GM approvals, neonicotinoids and glyphosate.
These frustrations raise serious questions for the future of the CAP after 2020, according to Matthews, and it cannot be more of the same. Matthews said while he deeply regretted the UK’s decision to leave the EU, it was now up to the remaining member states to make the European Union a success and an attractive goal once again so that in another generation it will be the objective of a new cohort of British leaders to seek re-admission.
SHARING OPTIONS: