News and analysis on trade policy in Europe
Thursday, July 29, 2021
The United Kingdom has challenged the European Union to renegotiate large parts of the Northern Ireland Protocol – or face the prospect of unilateral renunciation of these measures on the part of London. The essence of its proposal is to allow goods to move freely from Great Britain to Northern …
The post Brexit settlement of the matter of Gibraltar, the tiny territory at the tip of the Iberian peninsula whose status was always a sore point between the United Kingdom and Spain, was postponed by negotiators in 2020 focused on getting the Trade and Cooperation Agreement between Brussels and London …
The United Kingdom will not be rushing to emulate the European Union by imposing carbon border taxes to prevent ‘leakage’ of carbon emissions in major industrial sectors.
The EU and UK have agreed a three-month extension to the ‘grace period’ allowing chilled meat products, such as sausages, to be moved from Great Britain and Northern Ireland. Britain will have to keep its existing SPS standards unchanged for the three-month duration of the chilled meats extension – although, …
The British national standards body BSI will remain a member of CEN and CENELEC, the leading European standardisation bodies, following a recent decision by their general assemblies. Agreement between European and British standards organisations is a novelty in recent UK-EU relations. There are lessons to learn from this step, which …
The EU and UK will announce an agreement “within the next 48 hours” to defer the threat of a ban on UK sausages and other chilled processed meats entering Northern Ireland, European Commission vice-president Maroŝ Šefčovič announced on Monday (28 June). But now the EU needs to deal with a …
The European Commission has, as expected, granted the United Kingdom a data ‘adequacy’ ruling which will allow digital transfers between the UK and EU to continue more or less as previously. But in a move which testifies to the tense overall relationship between Brussels and London, the adequacy ruling will …
Apart the formal launch of Britain’s CPTPP accession process and New Zealand trade minister Damien O’Connor’s visit to London this week the the other big ticket trade issue in the United Kingdom this week is and remains Northern Ireland.
A number of British car exporters are already choosing to pay the EU’s standard 10% tariff on their exports, rather than incur the risk of subsequent penalties if they are found to be in breach of rules of origin requirements.
The European Union and the United Kingdom remain at loggerheads over meat shippings from Great Britain to Northern Ireland.
