The United Kingdom’s exit from the European Union, completed in January, often returns to the pages of Italian and European newspapers for reasons that almost always have to do with politics, be it a new compromise with the Union on the status of Northern Ireland or the Conservative-led British government’s approach to new instances of independence from Scotland. We rarely talk about the concrete impact that Brexit has had in recent months and will have in the coming years.
The one thing almost all analysts agree on is that this impact will be long-lasting: we are just at the beginning of a story that will continue for a long time to come.
In the first months of 2021, there were many estimates on the negative consequences that Brexit would have for the United Kingdom in the short to medium term: they were data that did not deny even the supporters of Brexit, convinced that the advantages would only be seen in the long term. According to the Budget Responsibility Office (OBR), an independent agency of the UK government, UK GDP contracted by 0.5 percent in the first four months of 2021 due to confusion and reorganization due to the new trade agreement between the UK and the countries of the European Union, less favorable than when the UK was part of the EU.
More recently the European Commission he estimated that by 2022 the UK will lose 2.25 per cent of GDP due to the new trade agreement, while always according to the OBR both exports and imports from the United Kingdom are destined to drop by 15 per cent compared to a possible stay within the European Union.
While trade data and estimates are the easiest to calculate because they apply to measurable quantities – tons of goods transiting in and out of the UK – Brexit has had and will have consequences in hundreds of different sectors, from education to labor market passing from football: these are all consequences more difficult to measure.
In the course of 2021, it has also become even more difficult to estimate its impact due to the coronavirus pandemic, which has caused an economic and social crisis almost all over the world. “It is extremely difficult to separate the Brexit factor from the economic crisis generated by the impact of the lockdowns”, he wrote recently on the Guardian Anand Menon, who teaches European Policy at King’s College London.
– Read also: UK plans to do without Europe
But even if the pandemic hadn’t happened, Menon notes, “Brexit’s economic impact was still destined to look more like a slow sting than a sudden blow, and its effects more subtle than some anti-Brexit rhetoric had anticipated. “.
(EPA / CHRISTOPHE PETIT TESSON)
–
This is clear from one of the most recent crises the UK has been facing in recent weeks, that is the shortage of hauliers to supply both large-scale distribution and petrol stations. The trade association of British road hauliers has explained that in recent months around 20,000 European hauliers working in the United Kingdom have left the country, almost certainly due to fears of bureaucratic difficulties due to Brexit. And already from the first months of 2020, about 40 thousand tests to obtain a driver’s license have been canceled due to the pandemic.
In some cases it is easier to attribute such inconvenience to Brexit. In recent weeks, for example, in the UK there has been a lot of talk about the fact that supermarkets may have very few turkeys available on Christmas days, a traditional dish in British Christmas lunches.
Kate Martin, from the British Turkey Farmers’ Association (TFTA), has explained to the agency PA News whereas while the small breeders mainly use local labor, the large distributors relied on specialized European labor that was hired to cope with the increase in requests during the Christmas period. Due to Brexit it will no longer be possible to take on these specialized jobs (work permits for Europeans have been reduced to a few categories of ultra-specialized workers). And again because of Brexit it will be difficult to import turkeys from Europe, given the increasingly high costs of imports linked to the increase in bureaucracy at the border.
At the end of September, the government tried to fix it by announcing a temporary mechanism to guarantee 5,500 permits for workers specialized in poultry farming, a higher number of even the special permits issued to hauliers: but it is not clear how many of them will actually apply, nor how the government intends to solve more permanently the labor shortage in this department, which also affects the poultry farmers who supply fast food restaurants.
But to resume the metaphor of the sting, in recent months we have just glimpsed some of the consequences that Brexit will have in certain sectors in the coming years.
By 2026, the countries of the European Union have pledged to gradually surrender the fishing quotas in British waters that were guaranteed to them by the United Kingdom’s membership of the European Union. From 2026 onwards, the shares will be negotiated on an annual basis.
But on such a divisive and identifying issue, especially for the internal debate in the United Kingdom, it is logical to think that divergences and possible accidents will arise. In early summer, for example, the British government he had threatened to have the Navy intervene to resolve a dispute over access to the waters of Jersey, a small island in the English Channel formally part of the United Kingdom but frequented mainly by French fishermen, and dependent on France for its energy needs.
A beach on the island of Jersey (DPA / ANSA / Juergen Darmstaedter)
–
The British Conservative government he also signaled the intention to move away from stringent European legislation on the protection of personal data, which also includes the infamous General Data Protection Regulation, or GDPR.
L’Economist he points out that if the current regulation, recognized as sufficient by the European authorities, is weakened, “or if the United Kingdom enters into data sharing agreements with less stringent countries, or if it decides not to cooperate with the European Commission on these points”, the EU could decide not to consider the UK a safe country for sharing personal data from 2025, with very wide and partly unpredictable consequences.
As well as on the protection of personal data, the consequences of Brexit will also depend on many decisions that the British government will have to take. One above all is politics, but it also concerns the economy and many other sectors: the management of the autonomist and independence pressures of Northern Ireland, Scotland and to a lesser extent Wales. Without them, in fact, there is no longer a United Kingdom, only England.
– Read also: An ever less United Kingdom
The most delicate concerns Northern Ireland. After the Brexit agreements, Northern Ireland remained in the European common market and customs union to prevent a physical barrier from being built with Ireland. However, the stay in Northern Ireland has resulted in many new checks and paperwork for goods arriving from the rest of the UK, which have already caused various inconveniences to people living in Northern Ireland, but also economic damage to British companies.
A few days ago the European Commission proposed some measures to soften existing controls. For now the UK he refused, also asking to remove from the agreements the possibility that in the event of some disputes the European Union may sue the United Kingdom before the Court of Justice of the European Union, the main judicial body of the Union. Bloomberg warns than these tensions could lead to a trade war, ie the imposition of reciprocal duties on incoming products: a possibility that both European and especially British companies would like to avoid.
Meanwhile, Boris Johnson’s government is defending itself from the various Brexit allegations by explaining that the inconveniences are temporary and that its benefits will begin to be seen in the coming years. “I am convinced that in the long term the agility, flexibility and freedom that Brexit grants us will have a greater value in the global economy of the 21st century than mere proximity to a market”, he said recently the Minister of Economy, Rishi Sunak.
Even several commentators are convinced that the Conservative government will have to intervene heavily to solve the many problems that Brexit has caused and will cause. Most recently Martin Wolf, one of the leading economic columnists of the Financial Times, he wrote that to realize Sunak’s and Johnson’s vision, the government would have to approve a series of gigantic and ambitious reforms, including “a massive state plan to finance upgrading workers’ skills, maintaining generous credit rates to stimulate investment , and the transfer of some competences – including fiscal ones – to local authorities ». But at the moment, Wolf concludes, “no such plan seems on the horizon”.
–
