Tuesday 28 March 2017

Nobody move… or the French tourism industry gets it.

From The Evening Standard:

The EU chief leading the Brexit negotiations has painted a bleak picture of an “undoubtedly worse off” Britain if the two sides cannot agree a deal.

Good, start with some veiled threats.

Writing two days ahead of Theresa May’s expected triggering of Article 50, Michel Barnier said failure in the talks would lead to “severe disruption” at airports and “long queues” for tourists and lorry drivers at Dover.

He apparently wants to discourage British tourists from visiting France, ah well, plenty of other countries in the world. As to "lorry drivers", the French already treat them like shit, it's time we sorted out an alternative route via a country that doesn't go on strike every week and is prepared to police immigrants properly, maybe Belgium or The Netherlands?

In an article in the Financial Times he also warned business would be hit by “disruption of supply chains” that could even include “the suspension of nuclear material” to Britain, which gets around a fifth of its energy from nuclear reactors.

More open threats this time. He wants France/the EU to actually impose an embargo on us.

The 66-year-old Frenchman, a former European Commissioner, insisted the remaining 27 member states would find it easier to adjust as they would still benefit from the single market, the customs union and 60 trade deals with other countries.

As to the "60 trade deals", I trust he's aware that as a general rule of international law, those treaties will continue to apply as between the other countries and the UK.

He also said that the first phase of negotiations would be dominated by three “significant uncertanties” that need to be resolved before talks on a trade deal can begin.

Firstly, the rights of the 3.2 million EU citizens in living in the UK and the 1.2 million British born residents of Europe. Mr Barnier said EU negotiators were “ready to discuss this issue from day one.”


It's none of their business, that is the beauty of the system.

For the time being, there's some guideline of international law that says the rights of foreigners already living in a country aren't affected by subsequent treaty changes.

For the future, EU rules say that EU Member States have to treat each other MS's citizens the same, fine, but each MS is free to make its own decisions re people from non-EU countries. As the UK will soon be a non-EU country, we can discuss this directly with other governments, which will save a lot of time.*

And has bugger all to do with trade deals anyway.

Secondly, the need for Britain to “honour its commitments” to the European budget…

Blackmail. Their clever lawyers say we have to keep paying for several years after we leave, ours say we don't.

… and third, ensuring that peace and dialogue in Northern Ireland are not weakened.

WTF does that have to do with us leaving the EU? Is he just making up stuff?
---------------------------
* People genuinely appear to ignore this obvious point, e.g. PaulC in the comments:

[The UK government] may need to agree... the status of existing EU workers to even get to the point of discussing a future deal with the EU on more general trade terms.

From the day we leave, there is no such thing as an "EU-worker" from the British point of view. They are German, French, Polish etc.

To give an analogy, UK immigration rules do not recognise the status of "ASEAN worker", they are Malaysians, Filippinos, Vietnamese etc. The Malaysians get slightly more favourable treatment as it's a Commonwealth country; the NHS actively recruits nurses in the Philippines (shame on us); the Vietnamese get no special treatment etc. The UK does not care what sort of arrangements the ASEAN countries agree between themselves, that is not binding on us in any way, shape or form.

From the day we leave, the EU has no power whatsoever to negotiate with the UK as to what rules we agree individually with Germany, France, Poland etc.

14 comments:

paulc156 said...

All immaterial if one wishes to just up sticks at the end of the formal discussions and go to zero tariffs regards imports from non EU, WTO terms...whatever. Yet it seems unlikely that even Davis and chums seem so keen to take this route. If they want a more amicable deal and in good time they may just have to agree some £'s divorce settlement and will probably have to continue to make significant payments in future years to secure terms with the EU. They may need to agree this and the status of existing EU workers to even get to the point of discussing a future deal with the EU on more general trade terms. It also appears that the much lower numbers of foreign workers envisaged by most brexiters is a low priority for the Tories. Plenty of job opportunities for civil servants and lawyers though

Shiney said...

@pc156

"All immaterial if one wishes to just up sticks at the end of the formal discussions and go to zero tariffs regards imports from non EU, WTO terms...whatever"

Remember the old adage... "fall back positions are the contingencies of the wise" - I think you just outlined ours.

Mark Wadsworth said...

PC, see update

Sh, exactly. Only I don't call it fallback position, that should be our main aim.

Bayard said...

Yes, it's a leading Bremainiac lie that no deal/WTO terms means tariffs on everything. Yes, the EU might slap tariffs on stuff that they import from us, but isn't that just going to mean that it makes things more expensive for their citizens for no reason other than spite? Nor do we have to reciprocate. In any case, they can't do worse than about 10%, which is hardly likely to make our foreign customers leave in droves. Our exports can go and have gone up more than that through exchange rate moves, so we know exactly what will happen, which is nothing much.

The whole thing is so French. They didn't want us in and now they have a chance to get rid of us, they are trying to be as spiteful as possible.

DBC Reed said...

@MW
Please explain how Brexit brings the advent of LVT any closer.Would have thought that the only thing that would dissuade the Beleavers from enforcing their eccentric ambitions is a downturn or stabilisation of house prices.

Shiney said...

@DBCR

Well, for one, it allows us to argue for the scrapping of that worst of taxes, VAT, and its replacement with LVT... which is specifically forbidden under EU rules.

Mark Wadsworth said...

B, agreed

DBC, see Shiney's comment

DBC Reed said...

@S MW
Denmark and Estonia have Lvt's .

Mark Wadsworth said...

DBC, that is true.

Shiney said...

@DBCR

Yes, but the also have VAT. So only half-good.

Mark Wadsworth said...

Sh, also true. VAT is such an awful tax, I'd rather have higher income/corp tax rates like in the USA.

FrankC said...

“disruption of supply chains” that could even include “the suspension of nuclear material”.
That would be our imports of spent fuel rods would it? I'm sure Sellafield will survive.

DBC Reed said...

@MW
VAT is becoming a bit of a bête noire.
Rather than the Qatari government (see above) directing investment into Brit rental opportunities such as the Olympic Village and the nationalised French railway taking rents off chunks of our system, I would rather get back to the post-war Brit mixed economy where housing ,water companies railways ,anything that is basically a natural monopoly, is nationalised or otherwise in public ownership. There I said it. Land nationalisation is always a viable alternative to LVT (it was for the great Gesell) and we are now,virtually, in a state of emergency.
The private school and trustafarian riff raff who have the private incomes and bases in London to meddle in national politics have ignored the LVT that might save the system they parasitically feed off and have ruined British industry with the ultimate wankers succeeding with the ultimate wank : Brexit (which does fuck all to stop the Qataris etc. feeding off the land values we create).
A lot of these rents may go back to the great rentier states like Saudi Arabia who appear to use it to subsidise the genocide which has set off the refugee flights into Europe which have caused panic and in the UK economic suicide under our witless government which has been stripped of economic powers.

Bayard said...

"I would rather get back to the post-war Brit mixed economy where housing ,water companies railways ,anything that is basically a natural monopoly, is nationalised or otherwise in public ownership"

Yes to public ownership of natural monopolies, i.e the land and all that is in or on it, railway tracks, pipes, wires etc. but no to nationalisation. Public ownership should mean run by the state, not run by what are essentially private companies owned by the state. As I've said before, the joint-stock company model doesn't even work very well in the private sector, where there is a profit motive to keep things vaguely efficient.

BTW has anyone else received a spam text from a Bremainiac today?