Press

“Obviously, this comes as a big blow to those who have been saying for a long time that Britain was going to do much worse outside of the European Union,” said Camino Mortera-Martinez, Brussels-based analyst for the Centre for European Reform policy institute.  

Trade in services is not well understood. Unlike trade in goods, where buyers and sellers physically transport objects across borders, it is possible to sell a service to a client on the other side of the world, unbeknownst to anyone else, without ever leaving the comfort of your living room.

John Springford, du Centre for European Reform, a calculé que le Brexit avait réduit le commerce total de marchandises de la Grande-Bretagne de 16 milliards de livres sterling (22%), en plus d’une réduction de volume de 10% dans les années qui ont suivi le référendum de 2016.

“It’s probably the right thing to do but it points to some political failings because it was very predictable,” said Sam Lowe, senior research fellow at the Center for European Reform, a research institute based in London, referring to the government’s announcement Thursday. “Clearly the infrastructure isn’t in place to allow for full inspections in July.”

As Christian Odendahl, chief economist at the Centre for European Reform think-tank, puts it of her Christian Democratic Union party: ‘The CDU is not the party of ideas. It is the party of maintaining the status quo.’

It’s not like anyone in the EU is able to fully exercise their freedom of movement at the moment, argued Camino Mortera-Martinez, a senior research fellow at the Centre for European Reform. “We are not departing from a normal situation,” she said. The unvaccinated wouldn’t face discrimination, Mortera-Martinez argued, because they would still be allowed to travel under limited circumstances - it would just be easier for those who’ve had the shot.

Sam Lowe, trade expert at the the Centre for European Reform think tank, said the Biden administration would soon have to conduct a wider discussion about how it deals with Trump-era trade policies.“It is possible the UK gets excluded from the [steel tariffs], but the US has to have that conversation themselves,” he said.“I don’t think Biden will get rid of them entirely, I wouldn’t be surprised if they were left on China, but the conversation will be whether they get rid of them for key allies like the UK.”