81 days to Brexit

Today it is 81 days left to Brexit, when United Kingdom leaves the European Union.

Next week UK will have its vote in the Parliament, House of Commons, on the deal on the table. Will it be possible to get a majority for this deal? It looks difficult. But nothing is impossible. What happens if it is a no to the deal?

Right now it looks like UK then will be leaving the EU without a deal, we will have a no-deal crash-out.

In the debate there have been discussions saying that leaving on what is called “WTO terms” would be equally good or better than leaving with the present negotiated deal. Ehat people then forget is the non-tariff barriers. This is what bothers me.

If UK would leave with no-deal, UK becomes a thord country over night and should be treated like any other third country in line with the EU Union Customs Code.

A deal would at the end of the day mean the same thing but at a later stage, and it would provide time to get border processing and procedures in place.

So to large extent it is on this perspective a matter of time. I have great respect for the different views on if this is a good deal for UK, or for the EU or not. This can naturally be debated. There are cost of being in a Customs Union and Customs territory with free movement of goods, and there are costs being outside such an arrangement. What is best for an individual country is decided by how well the country – in comparison with the common policy of the union – can negotiate trade deals and how well these can be implemented (often forgotten) in relation to modern customs, border and trade policies, procedures and processes.

When it comes to content of a UK-EU Brexit deal from a trade perspective , that still remains to be negotiated under the framework of ‘future relations’. So that is not known for the moment.

What we do know is that everybody involved in trade with UK need to prepare for both a no-deal and a deal scenario. There are 81 days to go.