Committees, visas and climate change: Brexit experts' verdicts on the deal details
From practical impacts on business travellers to odd references to obsolete software, three Brexologists dive deep
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Experts are still poring over the 1,246-page Brexit trade deal, but the devil is always in the detail.
Dozens of UK-EU committees overseeing all aspects of the deal will now have to be set up, committing the UK and the EU to semi-permanent Brexit negotiations.
New business travel rules will mean fashion models and musicians may need work visas for Europe. And the economic damage from restoring trade barriers previously demolished could be felt for years to come.
While the deal is thin, as expected, there are positives, including, say experts, on climate change, aviation and haulage.
Here, three Brexologists shed light on some other details they have found so far in the deal.
Catherine Barnard, professor of EU law, University of Cambridge
On Christmas Eve, Boris Johnson declared: “We have taken back control of laws and our destiny. We have taken back control of every jot and tittle of our regulation, in a way that is complete and unfettered.”
All sorted then? No – the deal shows it’s not that simple.
The effervescent rhetoric failed to mention a swathe of machinery that the new UK-EU trade deal, the trade and cooperation agreement (TCA), will introduce, with the powers to make legally binding decisions.
At the top is the partnership council (PC), a political body to be comprised of representatives of the European commission and UK government ministers.
It will consider “any issue relating to the implementation, application and interpretation” of the TCA. It even holds the power, in certain circumstances, to amend the agreement itself. Decisions are by mutual consent, including on jots and tittles.
Next comes a slew of technical committees. There’s the trade partnership committee, which can assist the PC, and 10 “trade specialised committees”, covering matters such as rules of origin and services.
Then there are eight specialised committees covering matters such as air and road transport and four working groups on matters such as motor vehicles and parts and social security coordination.
Staff in the UK’s slimmed-down Brussels office are going to be very busy.
Much of this mirrors many other trade agreements. Yet these bodies, especially the partnership council, will make decisions that will affect UK businesses for years to come. So how much will the public and their elected representatives know of what is being decided?
Who will sit on the PC, what is their mandate, and will the agenda and meaningful minutes be published? The practice of the joint committee, the equivalent of the PC under the withdrawal agreement, which was chaired by Michael Gove and the European commission vice-president, Maroš Šefčovič, is not promising. The minutes of its fifth meeting, on 17 December 2020, ran to a single page.
Equally, who will scrutinise the work of the PC and its various committees?
There must be a role for Westminster, but will that extend to the devolved administrations? The TCA makes provision for a parliamentary partnership assembly, with members drawn from the European and UK parliaments, which can be kept informed of the PC’s work and can make recommendations to it. There is a (weak) role for civil society too.
Taking back control of our laws was central to the Brexit promise. Starting with Wednesday’s scrutiny of the deal, Westminster needs to look very closely at what is being done in the UK’s name. It is time for parliamentarians to assert control over the future that has so loudly been promised.
Sam Lowe, senior research fellow at the Centre for European Reform
Beyond tariffs, quotas and fish, the TCA contains a variety of provisions. Among those with implications for everyone engaged in business travel are the rules governing what Britons entering the EU are, and are not, allowed to do from 2021 onwards.
The TCA allows for British short-term business visitors to enter the EU visa-free for 90 days in any given six-month period, but there are restrictions on the activities they can perform. Crudely speaking, the list of permitted activities shows that while meetings, trade exhibitions and conferences, consultations and research are fine, anything that involves selling goods or services directly to the public requires an actual work visa.
For example, from the beginning of next year a British fashion model could still go to Italy for meetings and to make connections, but if they wanted to take part in a paid fashion show or photoshoot, they would need to obtain an Italian work visa.
Similarly, touring musicians will now probably need to get a work visa (or multiple work visas) if they are to gig in venues across the continent.
Even for those activities seemingly permitted by the TCA, all might not be what it seems. Different EU member states have their own immigration regimes, which might allow additional activities or apply further conditions. Austria, for example, requires a work permit for market research. There also might be additional necessary criteria, such as a recognised qualification.
From 1 January, many businesspeople will probably be unaware of the new restrictions and continue to act as they did before. They might get away with it, or they might not. But breaching the terms of a visa could lead to fines, deportation and at the extreme end, being banned from entering the EU in future.
David Henig, director of the UK Trade Policy Project at the European Centre for International Political Economy
The climate change measures in the deal are new and welcome.
Reading trade deals is not for the unwary, written as they are in legalese drawing heavily on precedent to such an extent that there really is a reference in the UK-EU agreement to the software product Netscape Communicator 4, out of date since 2000. Even when it seems something is new in an EU deal, a check on a previous trade agreement will find something similar, or a fellow trade wonk will point out it has been lifted from some other obscure source.
Such a reliance on precedent partly explains why the rules governing trade at the WTO and in bilateral agreements have come to seem increasingly outdated with respect to modern trade, for example in having little to say about e-commerce. Thankfully, in at least one area the UK and EU have broken new ground, and that is in the battle against climate change. Previous EU trade agreements talked a good game without much substance; this one enshrines commitments on reducing emissions, including those from aviation, and implementing carbon pricing. There are also enforcement mechanisms, both domestic and through the trade agreement.
The EU is discussing implementation of a carbon border adjustment mechanism, essentially subjecting imports to a similar carbon-pricing regime as that in place domestically, to ensure no outsourcing of emissions. The details are likely to be complex, but the UK should be exempt when trading into the EU because it has already signed up to carbon pricing in the trade deal, and may even want to follow the EU’s lead in applying carbon emission analysis to imports into the UK. The US under President Biden is also likely to incorporate climate-change measures in new trade deals.
Climate change isn’t the only global issue where there is a strong case for ensuring imports meet domestic standards, and which trade deals are starting to address. Antimicrobial resistance, linked to the overuse of antibiotics in farmed animals, and animal welfare are others. Both are referenced in the deal, with the parties agreeing to cooperate, but on this occasion without firm commitments.
That’s another thing about trade deals: they rarely go far enough. They are, after all, predominantly about trade. But on all of these issues the UK can and should go further in future agreements.
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