Press

As Sam Lowe, a former member of the Department for International Trade’s Strategic Trade Advisory Group, now a senior research fellow at the Centre for European Reform, says, there is a possibility that the two issues will intersect and collide, making matters worse. “There are going to be delays at the borders and it is going to take the EU and UK a while to get used to trading under the new system and it is possible that imported equipment necessary for dealing with the pandemic gets caught up in that,” says Lowe.

“HMRC should provide some of these sites with people,” said Sam Lowe, senior research fellow at Centre for European Reform, who has studied the risk of accidental illegality come the end of Brexit transition. “There should also be an acceptance that they will take a while to adapt. Government should also step in to prevent them losing business to larger ports,” he said.

The Centre for European Reform argues in a report that a deal between the EU and the UK on international co-operation looks unlikely. It thinks London could try to “divide and rule” EU states on international questions, a strategy the EU will be “wary” of. The paper analyses the EU’s portfolio of foreign policy agreements and how well they work — or not.

Sam Lowe of the Centre for European Reform said: “If the vaccine is effective and rolled out quickly we could see a bit of a consumer-led economic boom in the next few years.”

Other potential upgrades could come on areas such as gender, the environment and digital trade, none of which  should be too tricky given they are issues on which both countries are broadly aligned, according to Sam Lowe, senior fellow at the Centre for European Reform.