Mella Frewen, FoodDrinkEurope Director General, identifies the ingredients of a beneficial trading relationship between the UK and the EU post-Brexit.
As anyone who has followed the Brexit negotiations can attest, the political process surrounding the UK’s departure from the European Union has been very challenging. There still remain many more questions than answers surrounding Brexit, and even at this late stage, uncertainty continues to complicate matters for our industry.
FoodDrinkEurope regrets but, of course, respects the decision of the UK to leave the European Union. What is of importance now is our future relationship. We must ensure a future trade relationship between the EU27 and the UK that allows for our strong trade links to continue and even to grow.
There is no industry more affected by Brexit than the food and drink industry. In 2018, frictionless trade between the EU27 and the UK resulted in food and drink exports to the UK worth €33bn, while exports from the UK to the EU27 amounted to €14.4bn. Many food and drink companies have established manufacturing sites across the entire EU28, including in the UK, and our supply chains have flourished thanks to free movement of raw materials and ingredients throughout the whole area. We have a lot to lose should the future trade relationship between the EU27 and the UK suffer and that is why we continue to advocate for the best interests of our industry – the largest manufacturing sector in the EU – and for the 4.57 million people it currently employs across the EU.
We firmly believe that the best way forward is to ensure no, or limited, regulatory divergence between the EU and the UK. EU food and drink standards are the highest in the world, and the British consumer should expect that these standards are maintained even after leaving the Union. To continue to uphold standards of food safety across Europe, the UK should maintain its membership of the European Food Safety Authority and the Rapid Alert System for Food and Feed. The UK contribution to these projects in the past has been important and greatly appreciated, and we hope it will continue. As we look towards the Free Trade Agreement that we hope to devise, we need to ensure that complex rules of origin, customs duties, additional agricultural components or any other equivalent border taxes are avoided, and that the introduction of a hard border on the island of Ireland is also prevented. We have long supported a customs union, which would circumvent all the above-mentioned complications and ultimately be to the benefit of the wider agri-food chain, from the farm right down to the consumer.
We firmly believe that the best way forward is to ensure no, or limited, regulatory divergence between the EU and the UK.
FoodDrinkEurope knows how laborious free trade negotiations can be and we insist on the importance of our sector in these talks. We will continue to engage directly with the European Commission, as we have done extensively to date, to outline our concerns and offer our expertise. We will ensure that our voice is heard in this new chapter of the Brexit story.
We have enjoyed many years of close partnership and friendship with the UK, and we wish our friends well. Although the UK is leaving the Union, our commitment to cooperation will not wane – we want to continue to do business with the UK and we will endeavour to ensure that this is possible post Brexit.
There are no doubt many reasons for the decision taken by the British people back in June 2016 to leave the European Union, but chief among them is perhaps a lack of understanding – understanding how the EU works, the important role of the UK in EU decision making processes, the advantages of the Internal Market, etc. We will continue to trade with our UK neighbours in future and we hope to find a way to work through the administrative, tariff and non-tariff, sanitary and phytosanitary barriers that are being erected between us.
Mella Frewen, FoodDrinkEurope, Director General
Avenue des Nerviens 9-31,1040 Brussels, Belgium
emailinfo@fooddrinkeurope.eu
web fooddrinkeurope.eu
