Brexit may seem a long time ago…

Quite understandably COVID-19 has taken the attention away from Brexit and for many businesses the current situation is about ensuring sources of supply, production and getting paid. In future blogs we shall expand on these important points in relation to the impact on specific business sectors.

Please share your experiences with us and what you are seeing at present in terms of supply chains and the nature of the goods and services that your business is having to focus on.

Turning to Brexit now, and at the time of writing, the position remains unchanged the UK is still due to leave the European Union at the end of December this year. The impacts remain the same, whilst this may differ from business to business, it is likely that your business will be impacted across a range of areas, here are just a few and we have not even discussed specific impacts in terms of GDPR, Products of Animal Origin, Export Controls and Chemicals

1. The requirement for Customs declarations for trade between the UK and European Union

– Even if you are used of making customs declarations you will still need to cope with an increase in volumes impacting costs and resources in your business

– And we must not forget all those important parts of the customs declaration such as commodity codes and maintaining proof of export

2. The requirement for Customs declarations for trade between the UK and European Union

– Even if you are used of making customs declarations you will still need to cope with an increase in volumes impacting costs and resources in your business

– And we must not forget all those important parts of the customs declaration such as commodity codes and maintaining proof of export

3. New and differing regulations

– We hopefully all know about the EU CE Mark for goods which have a health and safety impact, but how many of you know about the proposed UK CA Mark?

4. Trade with the Rest of the World

– Again, we hopefully all know about possible impacts on our exports of accessing the 74 EU Trade agreements from 1st January next year, but what about business coming the other way and imports from these 74 countries – Japan and Turkey for example

So, what will happen to Brexit – will it be delayed or extended?

We are awaiting official announcements but for now planning continues:

  • The first round of talks did commence in Brussels on the 2nd to the 5th March
  • The second round of negotiations due to take place in London on the 18th to 20th March were however cancelled
  • We have however ‘passed go’ and some progress has been made, the formal draft legal texts have been exchanged, although the UK has asked for their draft text not to be shared with the EU Member states, for the time being
  • Any extension to the 31st December deadline has to be agreed by 1st July, although the UK’s position is that no extension will be sought. All sides indicate there can only be one extension and it should last one or two years. As before what will your business do
    • Should they plan, should they wait and what will your competitors be doing?

Where do we go from here then…

We would be interested to hear your thoughts – plan in full, plan in part, don’t plan, what a few months to see what happens

From my side I would always say plan, but you may think differently.

Kevin Shakespeare

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