Saturday, July 28, 2018
Will Brexit be worse than expected?
There was an interesting article in the Independent almost a year ago today by Steve Bullock, somebody who worked at the UK Representation to the EU from 2010-2014 where he negotiated several EU regulations for the UK in European Council working groups. He has also worked for the European Commission and the Department for International Development’s Europe Department. So it is fair to say that he is an expert, not that that will impress Michael Gove.
Many of the points he makes have already featured on this blog but it is worth repeating them again. Indeed I covered this article at the time. So where are we a year later?
Steve Bullock's central argument is that the level of complexity involved in Brexit is unprecedented. He believed that Ministers have inserted their heads firmly into the sand, hoping tricky problems will just go away.
He suggested that due to this complacency, we are facing a breakdown in airline safety, medicine, animal welfare, security, international aid and so much more.
He pointed out that leaving the apparently obscure Euratom Treaty will jeopardise not only the UK nuclear industry, but also the supply of medical isotopes for cancer treatment, that the work needed to establish a new customs IT system is unlikely to be done in time and that UK airlines like easyJet may need to set up in the EU27, whilst Ryanair might move its planes to EU27 countries due to the UK leaving the Open Skies Agreement.
The point of contention for the UK Government of course is whether the UK will stay under the auspices of the European Court of Justice, which plays a central role in overseeing these international agreements. Theresa May and her Brexiteer fellow travellers do not want to retain any connection to this court and that is going to prove disastrous for the UK. Steve Bullock expressed his own frustration in the article:
There are literally hundreds of such issues where the effects of Brexit will be detrimental to the UK. All of these have to be resolved in Brexit negotiations, or mitigated by the UK Government. I worked on and in the EU for 12 years, but issues that had never even occurred to me come up all the time. For example, while we are becoming aware of the impact of leaving the Open Skies Agreement on the aviation market, few have spotted Brexit’s impact on aviation safety.
The UK does not have its own capacity to do things like certify maintenance facilities if it leaves the European Aviation Safety Agency. Yes, you heard that right. The UK won’t be able to certify the people that fix the planes. As with so many of these issues, the UK will either have to negotiate to remain in the agency (which is within the dreaded European Court of Justice’s jurisdiction), or establish its own capacity to replace what it does from a standing start in only 20 months.
How will the UK remain in the EU’s internal energy market post-Brexit as it looks to import more energy from the EU, and what are the implications if it doesn’t? What about the Emissions Trading System? Patents and intellectual property rights? Food standards? Medicine approvals? Europol? The list goes on and on.
Charitably, he attributes these failings to an inability to listen to experts. He wonders whether information is getting through to Ministers. My view is that the UK Government was and is frozen by its own indecision and divisions and has proved itself incapable of taking the decisions needed to secure the future prosperity of our economy.
What is really frightening is that a year after this article was written we are no further forward. None of the issues highlighted by Steve Bullock appear to have been resolved. We are careering towards the exit with no plan, no contingencies and no idea what the consequences of this government incompetence are going to be.
If, on 25th July 2017 Brexit was looking ropey, today it is looking catastrophic.
Many of the points he makes have already featured on this blog but it is worth repeating them again. Indeed I covered this article at the time. So where are we a year later?
Steve Bullock's central argument is that the level of complexity involved in Brexit is unprecedented. He believed that Ministers have inserted their heads firmly into the sand, hoping tricky problems will just go away.
He suggested that due to this complacency, we are facing a breakdown in airline safety, medicine, animal welfare, security, international aid and so much more.
He pointed out that leaving the apparently obscure Euratom Treaty will jeopardise not only the UK nuclear industry, but also the supply of medical isotopes for cancer treatment, that the work needed to establish a new customs IT system is unlikely to be done in time and that UK airlines like easyJet may need to set up in the EU27, whilst Ryanair might move its planes to EU27 countries due to the UK leaving the Open Skies Agreement.
The point of contention for the UK Government of course is whether the UK will stay under the auspices of the European Court of Justice, which plays a central role in overseeing these international agreements. Theresa May and her Brexiteer fellow travellers do not want to retain any connection to this court and that is going to prove disastrous for the UK. Steve Bullock expressed his own frustration in the article:
There are literally hundreds of such issues where the effects of Brexit will be detrimental to the UK. All of these have to be resolved in Brexit negotiations, or mitigated by the UK Government. I worked on and in the EU for 12 years, but issues that had never even occurred to me come up all the time. For example, while we are becoming aware of the impact of leaving the Open Skies Agreement on the aviation market, few have spotted Brexit’s impact on aviation safety.
The UK does not have its own capacity to do things like certify maintenance facilities if it leaves the European Aviation Safety Agency. Yes, you heard that right. The UK won’t be able to certify the people that fix the planes. As with so many of these issues, the UK will either have to negotiate to remain in the agency (which is within the dreaded European Court of Justice’s jurisdiction), or establish its own capacity to replace what it does from a standing start in only 20 months.
How will the UK remain in the EU’s internal energy market post-Brexit as it looks to import more energy from the EU, and what are the implications if it doesn’t? What about the Emissions Trading System? Patents and intellectual property rights? Food standards? Medicine approvals? Europol? The list goes on and on.
Charitably, he attributes these failings to an inability to listen to experts. He wonders whether information is getting through to Ministers. My view is that the UK Government was and is frozen by its own indecision and divisions and has proved itself incapable of taking the decisions needed to secure the future prosperity of our economy.
What is really frightening is that a year after this article was written we are no further forward. None of the issues highlighted by Steve Bullock appear to have been resolved. We are careering towards the exit with no plan, no contingencies and no idea what the consequences of this government incompetence are going to be.
If, on 25th July 2017 Brexit was looking ropey, today it is looking catastrophic.
