Getting Brexit done

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shpalman
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Re: Getting Brexit done

Post by shpalman » Sat Nov 21, 2020 2:15 pm

The EU already knows that it will have to deal with goods arriving from Britain.

The EU needs to know it can trust that goods arriving from Ireland, so Ireland will have to show that it is correctly dealing with goods arriving from Britain.

Northern Island will at the same time want to not have to do anything in particular with goods arriving from Britain while Ireland will want to not have to do anything in particular with goods arriving from Northern Ireland and of course one of these things can no longer be the case. The logical answer as far as most of us are concerned is that Northern Island needs to deal with goods arriving from Britain in such a way that Ireland, and therefore the EU, can trust them.

The EU won't want to punish Ireland for something which is the UK's problem but at the same time I'm not sure how they can compel the UK to set up a customs border between two bits of itself.
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Re: Getting Brexit done

Post by plodder » Sat Nov 21, 2020 2:48 pm

and of course on Jan 1st both sides will still have identical standards and protocols, so i’m not sure there’s much of a trust issue on day 1 tbh. Either way you’d think it would be easy to find a fudge.

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Re: Getting Brexit done

Post by plodder » Sat Nov 21, 2020 2:52 pm

Bird on a Fire wrote:
Sat Nov 21, 2020 1:48 pm

They could stick tariffs on everything, block imports and refuse further negotiation on anything till they're running the border properly? Invalidate the tiny number of international truck permits that exist? Take them to court?

The EU holds a lot of cards here, and is comparatively well-run. The UK needs them more than the EU needs the UK, remember. So I don't think playing silly buggers with international law would play out well in the UK's favour.
I think there would be a perception that this would be punitive and an overreaction, and it would be politically very divisive. These are supposed to be negotiations in good faith. The EU will be looking to play a much longer game - they aren’t looking to crush us.

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Re: Getting Brexit done

Post by Bird on a Fire » Sat Nov 21, 2020 2:57 pm

Surely it stops being good faith the moment UK standards diverge and they haven't put a border in place? That won't be January 1st, but I'd expect the EU to make it pretty clear what'll happen.
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Re: Getting Brexit done

Post by Little waster » Sat Nov 21, 2020 3:17 pm

plodder wrote:
Sat Nov 21, 2020 2:52 pm
Bird on a Fire wrote:
Sat Nov 21, 2020 1:48 pm

They could stick tariffs on everything, block imports and refuse further negotiation on anything till they're running the border properly? Invalidate the tiny number of international truck permits that exist? Take them to court?

The EU holds a lot of cards here, and is comparatively well-run. The UK needs them more than the EU needs the UK, remember. So I don't think playing silly buggers with international law would play out well in the UK's favour.
I think there would be a perception that this would be punitive and an overreaction, and it would be politically very divisive. These are supposed to be negotiations in good faith. The EU will be looking to play a much longer game - they aren’t looking to crush us.
If only there was some sort of fallback Plan B, like a sort of “backstop”.

Of course the UK could always break international law and publicly welch on such an Agreement dealing with Withdrawal, the GFA and the most basic WTO tenet, as it’s very first act as a “completely independent” country but that would be a very bad look, especially if your entire masterplan going forward is to sign a load of good faith trade agreements with all and sundry.

Including in no particular order:-

our biggest trade partner the EU27,
the 15% of our trade governed via EU-brokered agreements
The GFA-signatory US with a newly elected Irish-American POTUS looking to make an impact
The ROW who we are looking to trade on under WTO auspices until we deal with them individual.

That’s a brave decision.

OTOH we could just swallow the Irish Sea border which only real impact would be to:-

Force the Brexiteers into a humiliating climbdown ... again.
Make Johnson look like a shifty and dishonest incompetent ... again.
Throw the pro-Brexit Unionists under a bus ... again.
Prove the Tories aren’t fit for government ... again.
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Re: Getting Brexit done

Post by plodder » Sat Nov 21, 2020 3:44 pm

<sigh>
except the sea border (or any border) won’t be ready by Jan 1st. So there will either be spluttering or pretending or a combination of both.

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Re: Getting Brexit done

Post by Martin Y » Sat Nov 21, 2020 3:50 pm

Bird on a Fire wrote:
Sat Nov 21, 2020 2:57 pm
Surely it stops being good faith the moment UK standards diverge and they haven't put a border in place? That won't be January 1st, but I'd expect the EU to make it pretty clear what'll happen.
Sounds as if there's a fudging opportunity if the EU accept a UK promise to declare whenever UK standards diverge.

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Re: Getting Brexit done

Post by Bird on a Fire » Sat Nov 21, 2020 6:08 pm

Martin Y wrote:
Sat Nov 21, 2020 3:50 pm
Bird on a Fire wrote:
Sat Nov 21, 2020 2:57 pm
Surely it stops being good faith the moment UK standards diverge and they haven't put a border in place? That won't be January 1st, but I'd expect the EU to make it pretty clear what'll happen.
Sounds as if there's a fudging opportunity if the EU accept a UK promise to declare whenever UK standards diverge.
Or even just a promise have sorted the border infrastructure/staffing issues before diverging. I'm not sure the EU would want to trust the UK to decide when its diverging from EU law (this has come up once or twice in the negotiations).

That said, I expect Johnson and Co. will want to start deregulating quite quickly. The first strikes will probably be against environmental legislation, because that would save corporations money and most voters won't really notice or care.

Place your bets on whether, before announcing some jolly "f.ck newts, f.ck bats, f.ck freshwater" crusade they attend to the details of installing border infrastructure between two different parts of the UK.

And again, remember, this is the Conservatives accelerating the decolonisation of Ireland. No Irish Sea border was obviously always the weakest of May's red lines, but still. Wowser. They've been in charge four years and still haven't got the foggiest idea what they're gonna do in six weeks. Their promise of a techno unicorn was obviously always b.llsh.t, but they also haven't managed anything clever legally or politically and once again they're massively pissing off businesses.
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Re: Getting Brexit done

Post by veravista » Sat Nov 21, 2020 7:52 pm

All they need to do is to strictly enforce the channel crossings from France and Holland as a 'persuader', 48 hours of that and the UK would grind to a halt.

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Re: Getting Brexit done

Post by plodder » Sat Nov 21, 2020 9:52 pm

Gunships? Don’t be silly.

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Re: Getting Brexit done

Post by Bird on a Fire » Sat Nov 21, 2020 10:16 pm

I assumed veravista was talking about paperwork and inspections at the Channel border oh wait you're joking aren't you.
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Re: Getting Brexit done

Post by veravista » Sat Nov 21, 2020 11:27 pm

The French don't need to do anything apart from work to the rules. I had the unfortunate experience a couple of years ago when they had a bit of a spat with the UK and decided to check every car at the Channel Tunnel. All they did was to either ask the driver and passengers the nature of their business and and have a look in the boot. Result was we left Paris at 3pm and finally got back to the Midlands at 3am.

Just imagine if they tried really hard to be obstructive (and quite frankly, I wouldn't blame them)

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Re: Getting Brexit done

Post by Gfamily » Sun Nov 22, 2020 5:39 pm

A story on the BBC website about a couple that took off in a Camper Van 6 years ago and are enjoying travelling through Europe staying here and there.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-tyne-54842438

No word that their horizons will be severely curtailed about 90 days after the end of next month.
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Re: Getting Brexit done

Post by PeteB » Sun Nov 22, 2020 6:21 pm

plodder wrote:
Sat Nov 21, 2020 2:48 pm
and of course on Jan 1st both sides will still have identical standards and protocols, so i’m not sure there’s much of a trust issue on day 1 tbh. Either way you’d think it would be easy to find a fudge.
I think this is fundamental misunderstanding. It doesn't matter if we have the same standards /protocols. The uk srops participating in the regulatory "ecosystem", with its provisions for joint market surveillance, supervision, enforcement and dispute settlement. This is what makes the single market work.

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Re: Getting Brexit done

Post by plodder » Sun Nov 22, 2020 8:20 pm

No disputes will occur on day 1, or day 2, or until one party changes something. During that period we will have a pretend "ecosystem" to save everyone's blushes.

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Re: Getting Brexit done

Post by Bird on a Fire » Sun Nov 22, 2020 8:25 pm

How difficult is it to bring a dispute? (Serious question)

For instance, could an "activist lawyer" bring a case a week into January?

Does a case have to be brought by a national government/ EU body, or could it just be an accelerationist Irish Republican making an obscure point about farming standards?
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Re: Getting Brexit done

Post by plodder » Sun Nov 22, 2020 8:30 pm

It would be very hard if there was no agreed dispute resolution mechanism!

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Re: Getting Brexit done

Post by Bird on a Fire » Sun Nov 22, 2020 8:57 pm

The EU definitely has mechanisms for resolving disputes with third countries, and the UK is making it clear that it would prefer those mechanisms to be used than internal EU processes.

I don't mean gunships.
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Re: Getting Brexit done

Post by Sciolus » Sun Nov 22, 2020 9:41 pm

plodder wrote:
Sun Nov 22, 2020 8:20 pm
No disputes will occur on day 1, or day 2, or until one party changes something. During that period we will have a pretend "ecosystem" to save everyone's blushes.
There are already disputes where the UK is in breach of various EU directives (e.g. on the environment), which are rumbling through the glacial judicial process.

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Re: Getting Brexit done

Post by AMS » Sun Nov 22, 2020 9:57 pm

It's also about whether goods have been inspected and meet standards, not just whether UK standards have diverged. Before, products might have been certified at the factory as up to scratch by an EU-accredited inspector, whereas now they'll be appearing at border posts carrying a certificate issued by a third party agency that isn't subject to EU law. I think this is the root of a lot of the problems for food products in particular.

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Re: Getting Brexit done

Post by jdc » Sun Nov 22, 2020 10:19 pm

Bird on a Fire wrote:
Sun Nov 22, 2020 8:57 pm
The EU definitely has mechanisms for resolving disputes with third countries, and the UK is making it clear that it would prefer those mechanisms to be used than internal EU processes.

I don't mean gunships.
Disputes between the EU and third countries that have some kind of deal with the EU seem to go to an arbitration panel where you'd have, e.g., one rep from Ukraine, one from the EU, and one from Switzerland. I think the dispute resolution mechanisms are always part of the bilateral agreements.

https://ec.europa.eu/trade/policy/acces ... -disputes/
The EU includes a dispute settlement mechanism in all its trade agreements so that the EU and its trading partners can resolve disputes.

The system allows for the rapid settlement of disputes and is modeled after the WTO dispute settlement system. It is specifically designed to deal with disputes arising out of the rules of the bilateral trade agreement.
Where the EU had a dispute with a third country that they had no deal with presumably they'd go to the WTO?

https://ec.europa.eu/trade/policy/acces ... -disputes/
https://trade.ec.europa.eu/wtodispute/search.cfm?code=1
https://trade.ec.europa.eu/wtodispute/search.cfm?code=2

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Re: Getting Brexit done

Post by bmforre » Sun Nov 22, 2020 11:44 pm

jdc:
From Norway and the EU
... because the EEA EFTA states are not members of the EU, they are constitutionally not able to accept direct decisions by the European Commission or the Court of Justice of the European Union. Separate EEA EFTA bodies have therefore been set up that correspond to these EU bodies: The EFTA Surveillance Authority (ESA) and the EFTA Court.
Efta court

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Re: Getting Brexit done

Post by Bird on a Fire » Sun Nov 22, 2020 11:52 pm

Sciolus wrote:
Sun Nov 22, 2020 9:41 pm
plodder wrote:
Sun Nov 22, 2020 8:20 pm
No disputes will occur on day 1, or day 2, or until one party changes something. During that period we will have a pretend "ecosystem" to save everyone's blushes.
There are already disputes where the UK is in breach of various EU directives (e.g. on the environment), which are rumbling through the glacial judicial process.
Presumably under legal convention the UK is subject to whatever law was in force at the time, and so ought to be legally subject to EU mechanisms for those cases for as long as the rumbling lasts. Getting anything enforced afterwards might be tricky though - what if the rUK just says "Nuts to your fine!"?
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Re: Getting Brexit done

Post by Bird on a Fire » Sun Nov 22, 2020 11:57 pm

jdc wrote:
Sun Nov 22, 2020 10:19 pm
Where the EU had a dispute with a third country that they had no deal with presumably they'd go to the WTO?
That's the type of country the UK looks likely to become on Jan 1 (and they're trying to avoid the dispute settlement mechanism in general anyway).

I think the WTO is an option, especially for trade stuff. The UK is also signatory to other international conventions, for instance on the environment (the only area of law I know anything at all about) there are agreements under other organisations like the UN or the Council of Europe (which it would be fun to watch Brexiters conjure with) which have built-in enforcement mechanisms to some extent, so there may be other bodies the EU could complain to about other stuff.
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Re: Getting Brexit done

Post by dyqik » Mon Nov 23, 2020 12:50 am

Bird on a Fire wrote:
Sun Nov 22, 2020 11:57 pm
jdc wrote:
Sun Nov 22, 2020 10:19 pm
Where the EU had a dispute with a third country that they had no deal with presumably they'd go to the WTO?
That's the type of country the UK looks likely to become on Jan 1 (and they're trying to avoid the dispute settlement mechanism in general anyway).

I think the WTO is an option, especially for trade stuff. The UK is also signatory to other international conventions, for instance on the environment (the only area of law I know anything at all about) there are agreements under other organisations like the UN or the Council of Europe (which it would be fun to watch Brexiters conjure with) which have built-in enforcement mechanisms to some extent, so there may be other bodies the EU could complain to about other stuff.
Last I heard, the WTO dispute settlement board isn't quorate, because Trump refused to name anyone to it, and can't hear new cases.

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