Seafish guidelines on post-Brexit Free Trade Agreement.

Seafish on Brexit and how to allow goods to circulate freely around the EU27 and the UK

UNITED KINGDOM
Thursday, November 15, 2018, 02:40 (GMT + 9)

Seafish has released a post-Brexit free trade agreement guide to processors following the decision taken by the United Kingdom’s Government to settle a Free Trade Agreement (FTA) with the European Union, maintaining the current trade and tariff arrangements.

In addition, this FTA would allow goods to circulate freely around the 27 EU member states and the UK.

The industry authority states that under a future EU/UK FTA new criteria will have to be agreed to allow the determination of the origin of the UK fish caught within the UKs Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) as UK product.

In addition, it points out that when fish is caught outside UK territorial waters, the origin of the vessel or factory ship will be key to determining the origin of the seafood.

According to Seafish, these Rules of Origin requirements will also have an impact on seafood products manufactured in the UK which use imported products as an ingredient. The protocols for current FTAs with the EU require products to wholly originate in a country party to the agreement. If the terms of a UK/EU FTA reflect existing FTAs then products produced in the UK from non-UK originating material would not be considered to be a UK product and would not be permitted to trade freely.

The entity stresses that this situation would mean that even with an FTA, tariffs would be applied when the product is imported into the UK and when the finished product is then exported.

Seafish recalls that in March 2018 the Food & Drink Federation, on behalf of its members, commissioned Global Counsel, specialists in business, politics and policy making to assess the impact of applying the CETA and PEM protocols to a range of processed food products.

The association says that the draft protocol is currently being considered by central government (Defra, BEIS, DIT and DExEU) and expect that subject to agreement, the government consults with the wider group of UK food and drink trade associations and their EU counterparts on the proposal.

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