| Topic: | Re:Re:Re:Re:Re:Re:Re:Happy Brexit! | |
| Posted by: | Francis Rowe | |
| Date/Time: | 02/01/21 07:52:00 |
| We have left the EU, the Customs Union and the Single Market and we need to deal with the new reality. It would now be good if people who believe this is a good idea, perhaps Clare, could explain why they think this is a good idea. I had a worrying Zoom call this week with a Europe based friend who understands issue of international trade law. She quoted a report in a local newspaper which described the new arrangements for ruling on disputes as like one of the disguises adopted by Peter Sellers in the Pink Panther. The European Court of Justice has become an independent artibitration panel and this Boris Johnson tells us makes us an independent nation again. The informed European view seems to be one of shock that the thrust of British negotiation strategy was not about gaining advantage for British industry but the presentation of the successor arrangements to the ECJ. So rather than a court we have an independent arbitration panel but it is here where the Seller's false moustache is in action. Like the court the panel will be made up of judges versed in the laws governing the single market. The ECJ was already independent of the executive so this panel isn't de facto any more independent. The composition of the judges will change presumably so that there will always a British judge on the panel but he or she will see their duty to uphold the law rather than promote British interests. In other words having a home judge isn't going to allow us to ignore European law as it applies to trade. Calling the new court an independent panel means Johnson can claim to have taken back control but, like many of the boasts he has made since agreeing to this deal, this appears to be a falsehood. That this country is still subject to European law with regard to trade with Europe has not changed. However, our ability to shape that law has now been lost. Secondly the new court/arbitration panel has effectively been given much more teeth as ultimately any ruling against the UK can be backed up by the threat of tariffs something that we were protected from before. The report makes a number of predictions. Firstly, that initially the court/arbitration panel will spend much of its time enforcing the new rule regime to the detriment of British industry e.g. forcing it to scrap stock with the CE trademark. Then the European legislature will introduce a range of new measures specifically designed to put British industries at a competitive disadvantage which the new court/arbitration panel will be obliged to enforce. I am not an expert in trade matters but given the above, it seems to me that the deal agreed by Boris Johnson gives us less control not more, makes us less sovereign not more and gives the EU significant power to put us at a sustained competitive disadvantage in trade. There appears to have been no offset benefit to this as all the non-EU trade deals so far have basically confirmed trading arrangements we already had with the EU or, in the case of Japan, required us to make significant concession to secure a deal which is markedly inferior to the one we had. The Brexiteers have won. At least one of them needs to explain why the above is inaccurate and we haven't made a disasterous mistake as a nation. |