A month on, post-Brexit ‘teething problems’ hit UK-EU trade

One month after the United Kingdom, UK, made a New Year split from the European Union’s economic embrace, businesses that once traded freely are getting used to frustrating checks, delays and red tape.

British meat exporters say shipments have rotted in trucks awaiting European health checks. Scottish fishermen have protested at Parliament over the catch they can no longer sell to the continent because of complex new paperwork.

The manufacturers’ organisation Make UK said on Monday that 60 per cent of manufacturing companies have experienced “significant disruption” since January 1.

The British government says the troubles are “teething problems”, but companies say they are causing serious pain.

“A teething problem is something that will go away eventually,” said Alan Russell, who runs plant retailer Trees Online. New customs rules and health checks have prompted him to stop shipping to the EU and to Northern Ireland, which is part of the UK but remains in the bloc’s economic orbit because it shares a border with EU member Ireland.

“It’s five or 10 per cent of my business I have just lost overnight. I’m used to a little bit of unpredictability,” said Russell,” but this is without doubt the most severe and unpredictable event that I can’t do anything about.”

Britain left the EU politically a year ago, and quit the bloc’s single market and customs union at the end of 2020. A post-Brexit UK-EU trade deal means goods can still move without tariffs or quotas, but businesses face new costs, paperwork and barriers. While many firms prepared as best they could, details of the new arrangements were not nailed down until the trade deal was sealed on December 24, just over a week before it took effect.

The British government is accentuating the positive. UK supermarkets have not run short of food, in part due to businesses stockpiling against uncertainty caused by Brexit and the coronavirus pandemic. Traffic jams have not piled up at English Channel ports, and the government says its “reasonable worst-case scenario” of 7,000-truck tailbacks is now unlikely.

Cross-Channel traffic is flowing relatively smoothly, with less than five per cent of trucks being turned back because drivers lack the correct paperwork, the government says.

Business groups say that’s because some companies are simply staying away. The flow of goods is only about three-quarters of its January 2020 level, and Make UK says many firms have “put a hold on importing and exporting from the EU in a hope that things improve”.

While many British businesses expected hurdles to trade with the EU, those that ship to Northern Ireland from other parts of the UK have found they also face new customs and veterinary checks as part of measures to maintain an open border between Northern Ireland and the Irish Republic to the south.

An open Irish border, free of checks on goods or people, has played a major role in building peace in the region. The sensitivity of the issue was underscored last week, when the EU threatened to ban shipments of coronavirus vaccines to Northern Ireland as part of moves to shore up the bloc’s supply. That would have drawn a hard border on the island of Ireland – exactly the scenario the Brexit deal was crafted to avoid. British, Irish and Northern Ireland politicians all expressed alarm at the plan, and the EU dropped the idea.

AP