The British government has delayed plans to introduce full border checks with the EU for another six months as businesses warned that customs systems and port infrastructure were still not ready.
The extension was greeted with relief by UK companies reliant on imports from the EU. But it leaves British exporters facing continued unequal treatment compared to their EU counterparts as the bloc put full border controls in place from the end of the Brexit transition period on January 1.
Lord David Frost, the UK minister in charge of Brexit implementation, said the decision, taken as a “sovereign trading nation outside of the EU”, would help businesses recover after a year battling the Covid-19 pandemic.
“We are confident that this new timetable will allow import businesses to re-establish their trading arrangements after a difficult period due to coronavirus,” he added.
The decision means the UK’s start date for full controls is now January 1 2022. It comes nine months after the government U-turned and announced it had decided to delay full enforcement until July 1 2021, having previously promised the change would happen on January 1.
The European Commission said it was a matter for the UK to decide how it wanted to organise its borders, but added the EU would “continue to fully protect the integrity of the single market and the customs union, as well as its financial interests”.
The move did, however, raise eyebrows in Brussels. “It confirms the trend of taking back control by not taking control,” observed one EU diplomat.
Andrew Opie, director of food at the British Retail Consortium, said the decision to delay controls, while welcome, had come “in the nick of time”. He said many border control posts required for checks were currently “little more than a hole in the ground”.
Richard Walker, managing director at Iceland Foods, said the delay was “good if it helps ease the flow of goods”, noting the company had trucks stuck in Spain because of bureaucracy.
Louisa Pratt at G’s Fresh, a major supplier of salad and vegetables to UK retailers, said the decision to delay was a “massive relief” and allowed more time to streamline processes. “The Spanish system for generating phyto certificates does not talk to the UK one. The worry for us was the sheer volume of manual processing that would have been needed,” she added.
Trade bodies from a broad spectrum of industries said the additional time must be used to address fundamental structural issues thrown up by the EU-UK Brexit trade agreement.
Adam Marshall, director-general of the British Chambers of Commerce, said that the six-month delay could only be a “temporary solution” and should not distract from the need to focus on improving border issues that were an “existential” threat to some businesses.
“The UK and the EU must get back around the table and thrash out the remaining structural problems” in the Brexit deal, he added.
None of the joint UK-EU committees designed to manage the deal have been convened because of the continuing political stand-off between London and Brussels over Northern Ireland.
Pressure is mounting on the British government to address business concerns over the border frictions. Ahead of official trade data to be published on Friday, a survey of 900 directors by the Institute of Directors, found 20 per cent of businesses that traded with the EU had stopped doing so in January.
UK hauliers and exporters, which already face time-consuming and expensive checks on EU borders, warned that the longer it took the UK to bring in full border checks, the longer EU businesses would enjoy a competitive edge.
Richard Burnett, the chief executive of the Road Haulage Association, said keeping UK borders open also “weakens the UK government’s negotiating leverage” when petitioning Brussels to reduce burdens on UK exporters.
Charlie Dewhirst, senior policy adviser at the National Pig Association, agreed, pointing out that while British farmers were absorbing costly EU border bureaucracy, their German, Dutch and Danish competitors were sending produce freely into the UK.
“Until UK border controls are in place we are at a disadvantage in terms of our negotiating leverage with the EU,” he said.
Shane Brennan, chief executive of the Cold Chain Federation, said the delay created “ongoing unfairness” for UK food exporters, while their EU equivalents benefited from “de facto unfettered access” to the UK domestic market.
Source: Economy - ft.com
