EU turns up the heat on negotiations

Something for UK businesses, particularly food producers and farmers, to look out for today is that the government in the Netherlands is debating CETA (the Canadian trade deal with the EU). There is a dispute over Canadian beef imports containing growth hormones, to which the Dutch parliament objects . There is a strong chance that they could vote against the deal – which has taken 8 years so far to negotiate and clearly isn’t yet finalised.

 So why should businesses in the UK be interested in this given we are transitioning out of the EU?

 Firstly we need to take note that it has taken 8 years to get to this point and everyone assumed that it was a done deal – highlighting very clearly that nothing is agreed until everything is finalised in a trade deal.

Similar deals with the UK could take at least this long to organise and in the meantime trading arrangements will be subject to uncertainty – dynamic alignment with the EU or WTO terms – each of which could create friction and cost time at borders.

Secondly Canada’s food safety standards are arguably superior to those in the USA, chlorine washing for example has already hit the headlines here, and if the UK government were to strike a trade deal with the USA and accept lower food safety standards, today’s vote is a signal that it could make issues with the EU “more complicated”, and given that the French have already fired a warning shot about tough negotiations this puts us in a very delicate position between the world’s two largest trading powers.

 If we do strike a deal with the USA , how will this impact on food producers in the UK ? Competing against cheaper supplies from animals reared under welfare standards that are far less rigorous in a market largely driven by price not quality means UK producers will have to have contingencies in place to ensure their business models are robust. 

This is just one of the reasons why the Local Enterprise Partnerships across the East Midlands have launched a Business Resilience Programme ofr fully funded support to help any business in Lincolnshire, Derbyshire, Nottinghamshire, Rutland and Leicestershire.

Register your interest on the website today and find out about the fully funded events in particular the sector specific events in March for food and farming businesses and tourisim businesses with EU legal expert Neil Warwick OBE