Despite repeated warnings in recent months that the UK will need to settle its membership “debt obligations” to the EU and agree the rights of EU citizens in Britain before discussions can even touch on post-Brexit trade issues, details have suddenly emerged concerning how tariff-free quotas might be handled.
This includes the quota arrangement governing NZ lamb exports to the EU, under which NZ is allowed to export up to 230,000 tonnes of sheep and goat meat a year to the EU with about 40% of that total ending up in the UK.
It appears that European Commission (EC) officials are considering three possible post-Brexit solutions for NZ lamb: first, continue as present with the UK’s share being spread between the remaining 27 members; second, Britain would take over a portion of the EU quota, subject to changing the arrangements for sensitive products such as beef and butter; and third, reduce NZ’s current EU quota and leave Britain to negotiate its own new quota terms.
“Although these are the sort of options we will have to consider at some point, no one in the UK industry was expecting such details to emerge at this stage,” National Sheep Association chief executive, Phil Stocker, told [ITAL]Farmers Weekly[END].
“I’m surprised this has begun now, therefore, and am definitely concerned about it.
“If we get bounced into making decisions about these sort of things before we’ve had the chance to adjust to our exit from the EU and start thinking about wider trade deals, we could end-up with piecemeal decisions that don’t take full account of the whole picture.
“While this development makes me nervous, if we have to start talking then we’ll just have to get on with it.
“We’ve said all along that what we need is stability in our markets and, as far as possible, to stay with the status quo in terms of tariff-free access to the EU.
“Probably a good starting point in talking about the potential splitting up of quotas would be to look at the volumes of NZ lamb we’ve seen in the UK over these last few years,” Stocker said.
Back on the surprise of these issues being raised now, however, Stocker revealed he was involved in talks with senior UK Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs officials very recently, along with traders involved in taking imported lamb from NZ, and no one was aware the quota issue was about to break.
“I don’t think anyone was expecting this,” Stocker said. “It looks like we’re being bounced into this by the EC and we need to resist decisions being made without our input.
“The general issues have obviously been discussed over recent months but not in terms of the specifics. It would be entirely wrong for decisions to be made without the industry having its say,” he said.
