Minister rules out UK joining pan-Europe trade agreement
A minister has ruled out the UK joining a pan-European agreement to bolster post-Brexit trade.
Matthew Pennycook said the Government was “not seeking” to participate in the Pan-Euro-Mediterranean Convention (PEM).
Maros Sefcovic, the official who led post-Brexit negotiations for the EU, had told the BBC that the UK joining the PEM is “something we could consider”.
The deal allows for tariff-free trade of goods across Europe, as well as some North African and Levantine nations.
Asked if the UK could join the PEM, housing minister Mr Pennycook said: “We’re not seeking to participate in that particular arrangement.”
“Ball is in the UK’s court”
He also told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: “I think in general the Government’s been very clear… that we do want a closer relationship with our European partners, both in trading terms but also, importantly – and this speaks to your previous segment – in terms of security and defence co-operation, where we need to work far more closely.
“So absolutely, yes, we do want a closer relationship. As for this particular arrangement: no, we’re not seeking to participate in it at the present time.”
Some business groups have backed the UK joining the PEM as it would help to maintain complex supply chains, but the previous Conservative government chose not to pursue it as part of a post-Brexit trade agreement.
Speaking to the BBC at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Mr Sefcovic said the idea had not been “precisely formulated” and the “ball is in the UK’s court”.
The UK Government has begun consulting businesses on the benefits of PEM and how it could help cut red tape and improve trade, the BBC said.
Mr Sefcovic also told the broadcaster he would like to see the possibility of a full-scale veterinary agreement between the EU and UK reviewed.
If UK food and farm products were given single market treatment, “we would have to have the same rules and we have to upgrade them at the same time – we call it dynamic alignment”.
The lack of a veterinary agreement after Brexit has been a major sticking point for UK food businesses hoping to export to Britain’s nearest neighbours.
Dame Emily Thornberry, chairwoman of the Commons Foreign Affairs Committee, told the BBC the UK’s post-Brexit trade settlement with the trade bloc had “all kinds of holes” in it.
The Labour MP added: “Within that agreement there is a mechanism for improving it, and we need to seize that opportunity, because we need to make sure that within the constraints of the vote to leave the European Union, we nevertheless do everything that we can to get rid of barriers to trade with our nearest neighbours and the people who we trade with the most.”
The “uneven and difficult” situation with veterinary checks needed to be resolved, she added.
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Really Labour, get in there. Don’t roll over for trump. He is an abusive partner in any relationship.
Trump is only interested in Trump and anyone who doesn’t share his views will be blocked by him with vitriol .
That’s his only way of dealing with dissenters
His comments about The Archbishop of Washington were a prime example of his so precious infantile mindset!!!
Trump Mk 2 has a clearer plan than Mk1. Just look at his picks for cabinet, they are truly awful, security risks and just nasty but have intent. Trump has let out his brown shirts after they were convicted, this is not going to be an insular government. He will attack everyone and already started externally and internall.
dei is being closed everywhere, say he wants a deal, he could say we stop that as well.
Animal welfare standards in the UK are far higher than
many countries in the EU!!
But pretty much everything else like water standards and politicians are far lower
Why the downvote.Explain.
Strange how the UK government almost bend the knee to try for a trade deal with China but get the wobbles & waffle when it comes to talking about the EU.
But it’s not just EU, it is Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway, Switzerland, Faroe Islands, Türkiye, Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Egypt, Israel, Jordan, Lebanon, Palestine Georgia, the Republic of Moldova, Ukraine, Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, North Macedonia, Montenegro, Serbia and Kosovo..
All bastions of democracy and human rights?
I don’t get it.
Just because we voted to impose economic sanctions on ourselves in 2016 doesn’t mean we can’t cooperate on new trade initiatives.
Labour needs to grow up and stop being scared of the word “European.”
Enough Leave voters have realised what a big mistake it was (or died) to make it possible for the Government to completely ignore the hardliners still defined by being Brexiteers.
Before the referendum leave campaigners including Farage were telling us that ‘we could be like Norway,’ with access to the single market and customs union. If the people of both Wales and England had known the true consequences of Brexit then they would have voted remain. Would Port Talbot have voted leave if it knew it would lose its steelworks? Time to stop appeasing the Faragists and Trump apologists and put our economy above all else.
So what exactly does Labour mean by closer cooperation with the EU? At the moment it comes across as just meaningless rhetoric.
Seems odd as we are allegedly trying to grow the economy.