In a report published in December on the assessment of Article 50, the EU Parliament Committee on Constitutional Affairs found that Brexit proved to become a trading problem for the bloc.
Brussels, the Committee of MEPs admitted, was left dealing with third countries’ demands on the renegotiations of tariff quotas as Britain left a hole in the budget calculations.
The report read: “[The Committee] Observes that the withdrawal of a Member State has produced unprecedented legal consequences for the EU’s international commitments, notably with regard to the need to renegotiate the tariff rate quotas agreed at the World Trade Organisation (WTO) level to take into account the quota share used by the departing Member State, which thus allowed third countries to make additional claims for market access;
“Considers that with the UK’s withdrawal the apportionment of the EU’s tariff rate quotas was, as a principle, managed well by first adopting an internal legislative act laying down newly apportioned EU quota shares (notably in the form of Regulation (EU) 2019/21614) and then by following up through negotiations with third countries at the WTO level even though there are no legal provisions at that level that address the disintegration of a customs union.”
The UK, on the other hand, has so far been able to strike new trade deals across the world, with Australia, New Zealand, and Japan.
It is also in talks with India, one of the biggest trading nations in the world.
Britain and India formally launched free trade agreement talks in New Delhi last month with the aim of wrapping up a deal by the end of the year that could boost annual bilateral trade by billions of pounds.
Britain has made a deal with India one of its post-Brexit priorities as, free from the European Union’s common trade policy, ministers look to gear trade policy towards faster-growing economies around the Indo-Pacific region.
Meeting in New Delhi, Indian trade minister Piyush Goyal and his British counterpart Anne-Marie Trevelyan said they would also launch an “early harvest” or a limited-scope interim trade agreement in the next few months, before finalising the free trade agreement.
“This is an opportunity that we must seize to steer our partnership along the track of mutual prosperity for the decades to come,” Ms Trevelyan said.
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“Nothing is necessarily a deal-breaker in this agreement,” Mr Goyal said.
“And I will not think there is any way for anybody to worry about issues which are sensitive to any country, because both sides have agreed that sensitive issues are not our priority,” he added.
Ministers want to tap into the wealth of India’s middle classes and their appetite for premium British products like Scotch Whisky.
They also hope India can become a big customer of its green technology industry, and that existing service sector trade routes can be strengthened.
