Single Market

EU likely to reject bespoke Canada trade deal for UK

22 March 2018 Julia Magntorn is Research Assistant in Economics at the UKTPO and L. Alan Winters CB is Professor of Economics and Director of the Observatory. The European Union is likely to reject a significantly enhanced version of its Canada trade deal for the UK after Brexit. Our in-depth analysis of the Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA) between the EU and Canada concludes that the EU’s commitment to the Single Market is so deeply ingrained that a substantial loosening of the rules for the UK would be politically impossible. The EU may agree to some exceptions but these would fall far short of a bespoke deal and would be a poor substitute for the Single Market, say the report’s authors Julia Magntorn and L. Alan Winters. […]

By Julia Magntorn Garrett, L. Alan Winters|2025-07-18T13:56:14+01:0022 March 2018|UK - Non EU, UK- EU|0 Comments

The irreconcilability of the UK Government’s objectives for Brexit

2 March 2018 Dr Michael Gasiorek is Senior Lecturer in Economics at the University of Sussex and Director and Managing Director of InterAnalysis respectively. He is a Fellow of the UKTPO. There is much talk about the UK not being able to “cherry-pick” and “have its cake and eat it” with regards to post-Brexit trade policy with the EU. There are a couple of issues here. First, all EU agreements are different and hence by definition bespoke. Cherries are picked by both sides. This will also be true of a future UK-EU agreement. The question, therefore, really is to do with the extent to which the EU will grant the UK a bespoke deal in serious and substantive ways. The second issue is that it is far from clear that the UK government currently knows what all the ingredients are and what the recipe is for the cake it is hoping to share with the EU. […]

By Michael Gasiorek|2025-07-18T13:57:11+01:002 March 2018|UK- EU|0 Comments

Leave-voting regions are “most exposed” to Brexit services shock

11 January 2018 Dr Ingo Borchert is Lecturer in Economics and a fellow of the UK Trade Policy Observatory. Nicolo Tamberi is a Research Assistant in Economics for the Observatory The North East and West Midlands are the most reliant on the European market, sending around half of their services exports to the EU. Sources: Office for National Statistics (2017a); and authors’ calculations. Two of the biggest Brexit-voting regions would be hit hardest by a potential fall in services exports upon leaving the EU, new analysis suggests. […]

By Ingo Borchert, Nicolò Tamberi|2025-09-05T12:24:41+01:0011 January 2018|UK - Non EU, UK- EU|4 Comments

Magic realists and economic realists

15 December 2017 Alasdair Smith is an Emeritus Professor of Economics at the University of Sussex, and is a member of the UK Trade Policy Observatory. The deal done on Friday December 8 in the Brexit negotiations has already been subject to conflicting interpretations. The UK has committed to having no hard border in Ireland, and committed in terms which seem to admit no rowing back. […]

By Alasdair Smith|2025-09-05T12:25:12+01:0015 December 2017|UK- EU|8 Comments

Hard Brexit, soft Border. Some trade implications of the intra-Irish border options.

7 December 2017 Dr Emily Lydgate is a lecturer in Law at the University of Sussex and a fellow of the UK Trade Policy Observatory. How can the UK uphold its commitment to leaving the EU Single Market and Customs Union while also preserving the invisible intra-Irish border? Leaving aside crucial questions of political feasibility, this post looks at some of the options and their trade and border implications. Notably, there are limits to ‘flexible and creative’ solutions that involve turning a blind eye to customs and regulatory checks solely on the intra-Irish border: trade rules leave little room for such ad hoc approaches. […]

By Emily Lydgate|2025-09-05T11:54:46+01:007 December 2017|UK- EU|2 Comments

The impact of Brexit on cross-channel trade and the practical challenges facing the UK economy post-Brexit

26 October 2017 Nicolo Tamberi is Research Assistant for the UKTPO and Charlotte Humma is the UKTPO’s business manager. Leaving the Single Market and the Customs Union will require the implementation of new border controls between the UK and the EU that will surely increase transport time and therefore costs. However minimal they may be, these new procedures will negatively affect trade between the two parties. According to a study by EY, Economic footprint of the Channel Tunnel fixed link, trade between Folkestone and Calais via the Eurotunnel was estimated to be £91.4 billion or 24.8% of trade with the EU in 2014. Goods transported through the Channel Tunnel are exported from and imported to every region of the UK. Today, transporting things from one shore to the other requires minimal controls such as those that exist between Surrey and Somerset. Businesses on both sides of the channel increase their efficiency by integrating their supply chains and by relying on the prompt connection across the channel. So, what about Brexit? If one thing is clear in the impenetrable mist surrounding the future UK-EU relations, it is that exiting the Single Market and the Customs Union will require increased border controls. [...]

By Nicolò Tamberi, Charlotte Humma|2026-01-28T14:50:22+00:0026 October 2017|UK- EU|1 Comment

The ins and outs of the Single Market

11 October 2017 One of the most critical issues for the Brexit negotiations in relation to trade is whether the UK should remain in the EU Single Market. The Conservatives claim that the UK will no longer be members of its single market or its customs union by the end of a two-year transitional period, but at his party’s conference, Jeremy Corbyn said a Labour government would strike a deal with the EU that "guarantees unimpeded access to the single market" after Brexit. We have produced a short, animated video that explains what the Single Market is, how it works and the ways it effects trade, and thereby the economy. This includes the role of the European Court of Justice. Ultimately, the video explains that there is a trade-off between making your laws independently and cooperating sufficiently to be a part of a bigger market and achieve higher incomes. https://vimeo.com/237091027 Republishing guidelines The UK Trade Policy Observatory believes in the free flow of information and encourages readers to cite our materials, providing due acknowledgement. For online use, this should be a link to he original resource on the our website. We do not however, publish under a Creative Commons license. This means you CANNOT republish our articles online or in print for free.

By Nick Phipps|2017-10-11T15:47:19+01:0011 October 2017|UK- EU|3 Comments

State Aid is on the Agenda: Deal or No Deal

6 October 2017 Professor Erika Szyszczak is a Research Professor in Law at the University of Sussex and a Fellow of UKTPO. She is currently the Special Adviser to the House of Lords Internal Market Sub-Committee in respect of its inquiry into Brexit: competition. She is the author of The Regulation of the State in Competitive Markets (Hart Pub. 2007) State aid issues are highly politicised. And for good reasons. Taxpayers’ money is being used in a selective manner, without any democratic input into its effective use. Competitors, at home and abroad, feel aggrieved that a firm is either obtaining an unfair advantage or being bailed out, where it cannot compete on the market. But State aid may be necessary to combat unusual situations, such as environmental disasters, or financial crises, or to buy time to rescue and restructure in order to save jobs and a local economy. It may be needed on an ongoing basis to provide public services. […]

By Erika Szyszczak|2025-07-18T14:05:50+01:006 October 2017|UK- EU|0 Comments

Transition Made Easy

26 September 2017, L. Alan Winters CB, Professor of Economics and Director of UKTPO. Dr Peter Holmes Reader in Economics at the University of Sussex and Fellow of the UKTPO, Erika Szyszczak is a Professor of Law at the University of Sussex, independent ADR Mediator and a Fellow of the UKTPO. Now it’s official. More than a year after the UKTPO said that it would be necessary (see Briefing Paper 2 and NIER paper), the Prime Minister has announced that the UK wants a transitional deal that preserves the status quo. Namely, membership of the Single market, a customs union with the EU, free mobility of labour, jurisdiction of the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU), budget payments and no external trade deals. Sad to say, this seems like progress. Despite the language and some of the press commentary, Britain is not ‘opting for’, still less ‘agreeing to’, a transitional deal; it is asking for one in the negotiations. The Florence speech still uses the language of an ‘implementation period’. This implies that between now and 2019 the UK can both negotiate a final settlement to be implemented after the transition and the transition itself. But the Prime Minister has made no [...]

By L. Alan Winters, Peter Holmes, Erika Szyszczak|2025-07-18T14:08:18+01:0026 September 2017|UK- EU|5 Comments

The EU Regulatory Magnet: What Are the Consequences for the UK?

1st September 2017 Erika Szyszczak is a Professor of Law at the University of Sussex, independent ADR Mediator and a Fellow of the UKTPO. This week it was reported that the PM, Theresa May intends to “cut and paste” existing EU trade deals when forging a new trade policy for the UK. Today the EU-Ukraine Association Agreement (AA) officially came into force, although most of the provisions of the AA have been provisionally applied since 1 September 2014, with the trade provisions contained in the novel Deep and Comprehensive Free Trade Area (DCFTA), provisionally applied since 1 January 2016. The AA is a new model of external relations for the EU and it addresses matters beyond trade (cooperation in foreign and security policy, justice, freedom and security (including migration) taxation, public finance management, science and technology, education and information society). It is an innovative form of external action in offering a new type of economic integration without membership of the EU: an integration-oriented agreement. The new AA may reveal some lessons for the UK as it seeks new models of trade relationships. Indeed, the AA has already entered the consciousness of the wider public as a potential model for UK-EU trade [...]

By Erika Szyszczak|2025-07-18T14:08:39+01:001 September 2017|UK - Non EU, UK- EU|0 Comments

Our home