Two food-and-drink industry confederations from the EU and the UK have urged political leaders to agree on a status-quo transitional arrangement until an EU-UK trade agreement is in place.
In view of UK Prime Minister Theresa May meeting EU leaders in Brussels, the EU’s FoodDrinkEurope and the UK’s Food and Drink Federation (FDF) reiterated the concern of the industry across Europe due to the lack of certainty in Brexit negotiations.
May is meeting key EU figures in an attempt to work out a deal ahead of a summit in ten days. She will meet with European Commission president Jean-Claude Juncker and the president of the European Council, Donald Tusk.
‘We remain particularly concerned by the outstanding issues surrounding the Irish border, where more than half of all movements of goods are in food and drink,’ a FoodDrinkEurope statement read. ‘Practical and creative solutions will be required from all sides to maintain as frictionless trade as possible, and to avoid unwanted disruption in trade.’
Cliff-Edge Scenario
Neither the UK nor the EU27 could afford a cliff-edge scenario, and time was running out to provide businesses with the assurances they needed, the group added.
“A failure to make substantive progress soon will force firms to set into motion contingency plans, based on a worst-case, no-deal scenario,” said FoodDrinkEurope. “This will have important consequences for our businesses and their employees. [...] We urge negotiators to agree on transitional arrangements that will apply until an EU-UK trade agreement is in place, to protect the sector’s successes and long-term investment and the jobs that we support.”
The group added that both it and the FDF “strongly support a status-quo transition period, which allows existing trade and customs arrangements to continue largely unchanged, until a new trade agreement enters into force. This will help minimise the uncertainty and cost for business and our consumers.”
Uncertain Industries
On Friday, a UK government minister assured representatives of the country’s Wine and Spirit Trade Association (WSTA) that it was striving for a deep partnership with the EU post-Brexit, and that even a hard Brexit would not be a disaster for the industry.
The government was seeking to retain a comprehensive customs agreement, free trade, and the continued ability to advance negotiations with third countries, according to George Eustice, Minister for Food and Drink for the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs.
A few days prior, a new report by the European Livestock and Meat Traders’ Union claimed that a no-deal Brexit would be catastrophic for the European meat industry.
In addition, November saw UK consumer confidence tumbling to a new low – the lowest level since the aftermath of the vote to leave the European Union in June of 2016, according to research by YouGov and the Centre for Economics and Business Research.
© 2017 European Supermarket Magazine – your source for the latest retail news. Article by Kevin Duggan. Click subscribe to sign up to ESM: The European Supermarket Magazine.
