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A surprisingly weak performance by the Trade Secretary (but also surprising mistakes by the journalist) in this article on the attempt to justify the failure to replicate EU trade deals @henrymance (thread) ft.com/content/af71b0…
@henrymance Let’s start off: the trade secretary blames foreign countries’ willingness to believe in a no deal. “A number of countries ... are unwilling to put the preparation in for no deal.”
@henrymance This is correct. It is unsurprising - and indeed it misses what needs to be justified. It is not the fact that hardly any trade deals will be “rolled over” by Brexit day that requires justification, but the exaggerated promises before.
@henrymance The fact that our partners cannot negotiate quickly is due to several facts. 1) We ourselves hope to reach a withdrawal agreement. So why do we expect our partners to spend precious time and money on no deal preparations?
@henrymance 2) The negotiation of a trade agreement with the UK depends on many complex factors. Not least of all which relationship the UK has with the EU. The statement “others will wait and see what relationship that is” has been around forever.
@henrymance 3) The Withdrawal Agreement establishes a transition period which requires its own transition of free trade agreements - different from negotiating a UK one. So our partners are confronted with several FTA scenarios: a) WA rollover b) post-transition rollover c) no deal rollover
@henrymance But let’s move on. The article is a bit weak on the definition of free trade agreement. Which is understandable. But some readers might be surprised about the successor agreement with Australia. Because there is no FTA. It’s under negotiation europarl.europa.eu/legislative-tr…
@henrymance What is rolled over? A so-called MRA, a mutual recognition agreement. gov.uk/government/new…
@henrymance That is a reminder that there’s a whole number of agreements that need to be negotiated - and that the number of 40 is a bit arbitrary. How many MRAs does the EU have? This site lists MRAs with seven countries ec.europa.eu/growth/single-…
@henrymance The article then mentions the deal reached with Switzerland. It is worth to repeat that we do not know the precise content. Switzerland lists 28 pages of titles of agreements it has with the EU. What is carried over? We do not know. eda.admin.ch/dam/dea/de/doc…
@henrymance Fox claims he’s confident he can replicate the five most important deals by March 29, listing Switzerland, Norway, South Korea, Turkey. Really? We have already shown that there’ll be a Swiss FTA, but not one replicating the current status. And the others?
@henrymance Norway is in the EEA. Replication would mean we join the Single Market. Turkey has a CU. Replication would mean a CU. Has the Trade Secretary settled on a Norway + CU model? And has he told others about it?
@henrymance The article then states that Japan and Canada have yet to come into effect. CETA is in provisional application since September 2017 eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/…
@henrymance And finally the article states that the UK will continue to be covered by the EU’s trade deals during transition if the WA is ratified. That is not certain. The EU will ask its partners to do so. But nobody quite knows if all of them will agree.
