UK and EU Agree Draft Deal to Cut Food Export Checks
Food and farm exporters could soon lose a stack of paperwork and fees. The two sides have settled a draft text that would scrap post-Brexit checks on food and farm exports, with the UK-EU summit still to come this month.
Certificates and fees that would go
The deal should end the need for £200 Export Health Certificates and £25 Phytosanitary certificates. Inspector fees, organic certificates, some port fees and sampling fees are also on the list, along with other checks on trade in both directions.
Some products would sell again. Fresh sausages, burgers, seed potatoes and shellfish from UK waters could restart exports to the EU, and UK pets could travel to the EU with passports.
The government claims the UK economy will eventually gain £5.1bn in annual benefits. The BBC describes the food deal as the most significant part of the Brexit reset agreed so far.
Following EU rules as they change
The trade-off has a name, "dynamic alignment". The UK would accept the EU's current rules on plant, animal and food trade standards and adjust to them.
UK and EU rules are still mostly aligned, but England has diverged in places. One example is "precision breeding" of plants, previously known as gene editing. In recent weeks the two sides agreed transition arrangements for the period while the EU's new regulations come into force.
A European Partnerships Bill, already announced, would provide the legal route for applying new EU rules. The same bill would permit the alignments needed to link the two emissions trading schemes, which would spare UK exporters the EU's new carbon border tax.
Support and criticism
Supermarkets and farming representatives have backed the food trade plans. Some pro-Brexit campaigners object to EU rules applying again.
The British Chamber of Commerce published an analysis of members' views on Monday. It says the current trade relationship is "failing to deliver". In its survey, 56% of exporting businesses want EU customs paperwork and delays removed, and 58% of manufacturers say the same.
The wider package
The BBC understands the 200-page SPS text (sanitary and phytosanitary) has been circulated to EU nations in Brussels. The text goes to EU ambassadors on Wednesday.
Drafts on emissions trading and a youth travel and work scheme went out with a 15-page draft joint statement for the leaders. Numbers for the Youth Experience Scheme are still to be settled politically in the coming days. EU students are likely to wait until next year for a discount on the full foreign-student rate, as is the plan to reconnect electricity markets.
The BBC understands the drafts also touch on UK involvement in defence cooperation schemes, access to law enforcement databases and some reassurances over the EU's "Made in Europe" plans.
Our View
For food producers the details are practical: which certificates disappear and which products can ship again. The cost is the commitment to follow EU rules as they change. Neither the meeting of EU ambassadors nor the summit has happened yet, so the text may still move, and the youth scheme numbers show that some points are not settled.
Source: BBC News