The International Meat Trade Association (IMTA) has welcomed the UK Government’s recent White Paper on Brexit as providing the most detail to date on negotiations.
The White Paper, titled The Future Relationship Between The United Kingdom And The European Union, discusses the plans for various industries post-Brexit including maintaining a ‘frictionless’ trade between the UK and the EU.
Katie Doherty, policy director for IMTA, commented:
“We hope that the proposal allows for more meaningful progress in negotiations. The white paper refers to the avoidance of ‘the need for customs and regulatory checks at the border’ whereas previous government proposals have focussed purely on the customs element at the border.
“As the leading UK trade association in the international meat trade (importing and exporting) many of our members engaged in international trade are very familiar with veterinary checks. Those who currently trade intra-EU do not currently face this at the border.
“Though the white paper provides more detail on how the facilitated customs arrangement would work, there is a need to explore the practical implications of the proposal for tariff rate quotas and the repayment mechanism.
“IMTA is setting up a White Paper Working group to look at this as well as the proposals with regard to trusted trader.
“We hope that the white paper provides a catalyst for the negotiations to move forward, providing business with much needed certainty about the future trading arrangement between the UK and the EU.
“We are just over six months away from a hard Brexit if this is not achieved and time is running out for companies to prepare for this.”
To read the full White Paper report, click here.
This story was originally published on a previous version of the Meat Management website and so there may be some missing images and formatting issues.
