Do we have to choose between prioritising European or American trade? Let’s hope we don’t, because we need both. But the question has sharpened this week for two reasons.
The less important one is that Maros Sefcovic, the EU’s new trade commissioner, has suggested that the UK might join the Pan-Euro-Mediterranean Convention, a group of 23 countries with economic ties to the EU, including Norway and Switzerland, but also Ukraine, Turkey, Israel, Algeria, Morocco, Jordan, Lebanon and so on. It’s not a free trade area or anything like that, merely an agreement to foster trade by streamlining things like rules of origin.
Our relationship with the EU will toddle along, but that is the past
As William Bain, head of trade policy at the British Chambers of Commerce, explained, joining the group ‘would align rules and regulations on both sides in relation to the sourcing of components and raw materials used in exports.’
That would make exporting to the EU a bit easier by fixing a glitch in the present agreement.
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