BCF Blog - Brexit and a Future Trade Agreement with the EU

The Brexit Withdrawal Agreement Bill finally passed all of its Parliamentary stages yesterday, 22^nd January, and now just awaits Royal Assent. The European Parliament is expected to vote to approve the agreement from the EU side next week. The UK will therefore formally leave the EU on 31^st January.

This will kick off new, and separate, negotiations about a future free trade agreement between the UK and EU, with a transition period on current terms running until 31^st December 2020.

The Chancellor of the Exchequer made the news over the weekend with comments he made during an interview with the Financial Times, in which he addressed the issue of future trading agreements with the EU. He told the paper:

“There will not be alignment, we will not be a rule taker, we will not be in the single market and we will not be in the customs union – and we will do this by the end of the year.”

Commenting on these developments Tom Bowtell, CEO of the British Coatings Federation, said:

“We were disappointed that the current government’s version of the Withdrawal Agreement removed some of the commitments to regulatory alignment for chemicals that were in the previous Theresa May deal. The Chancellor’s comments over the weekend raise even more concerns for the coatings industry about the possibility of substantial regulatory divergence in future. A recent BCF member survey saw 90% of members express their fear of having a duplicate set of chemical regulations through a UK REACH, and all the extra bureaucracy and cost this would bring.

“We need government to understand the complexity of the integrated chemicals supply chain and come up with an appropriate free trade deal to prevent – or at least minimise – substantially added costs or disruption to our members.  The BCF will continue to engage in forthright yet constructive dialogue with civil servants and politicians to ensure a workable solution is found for our sector.”