With the UK Government struggling to find the unity that would allow it to present a coherent plan for customs arrangements after Brexit, other organisations are filling the gap with their own suggestions.
The latest to do so is BusinessEurope, a body which “speak” for all-sized enterprises in 34 European countries whose national business federations are our direct members.
It has issued Brexit: The Customs Implications and Solutions, a report which can be found at www.businesseurope.eu.
This warns that Brexit could result in a myriad of costly customs procedures, non-tariff barriers and regulatory issues. Every degree of divergence from EU membership creates additional economic barriers, it argues.
These could entail customs duties and declarations; complex rules of origin or issues of cumulation; physical and digital bottlenecks; diverging rules and legislation; a lack of mutual recognition and the introduction of conformity assessments.
BusinessEurope calls on the two sides to maintain the closest possible economic relationship while preserving the integrity of the single market.
As other business groups have noted, it stresses that regulatory alignment between the EU and the UK is of utmost importance in preserving value chains and avoiding non-tariff barriers to trade.
“No free trade agreement to date has come close to solving the issues of regulatory divergence,” the report warns, “and this will be a challenge for both sides to address in the framework of the future relationship.”
If trade really is to stay as frictionless as possible (as the UK Government has repeated on innumerable occasions), but the UK still wants to leave the single market and customs union, then BusinessEurope points out that the two sides have to come up with simplified customs procedures.
They must also start recruiting and training staff including customs officials, veterinarians and related staff such as those involved in managing sanitary and phytosanitary (SPS) issues.
