The UK’s rolled-over deals after the Brexit transition

UPDATE: On January 25, 2024, talks between Canada and the UK broke down — paused by the UK — over issues such as Canadian tariff quotas for UK cheese, rules of origin for UK cars post-Brexit (affecting duty-free rights) and sanitary conditions for Canadian beef in the UK (not about hormones as in some reports but “about carcass washes used in Canadian processing facilities” according to Janyce McGregor of CBC.

The result was that the Canada-UK deal was an incomplete “roll-over” of the Canada-EU trade agreement. See “UK walks away from trade talks with Canada” (CBC)

By Peter Ungphakorn
POSTED JANUARY 1, 2021 | UPDATED JANUARY 26, 2024

On January 1, 2021, Britain left the EU Single Market and customs union. That meant the EU’s free trade agreements with non-EU countries no longer applied to the UK.

The British government has negotiated, at speed, “roll-over” agreements with those non-EU countries in order to reproduce the effects of those agreements as much as possible so that continuity is maximised for UK business.

This article does not look at the contents or depth of the deals. It simply counts how many of the EU’s free trade agreements have been “rolled over” into continuity agreements with the UK, and how many have not been done.

FACT CHECK: Which UK geographical indications are in its trade deal with Japan?

By Peter Ungphakorn
POSTED OCTOBER 26, 2020 | UPDATED SEPTEMBER 27, 2022

UPDATE a year later: So far no new British geographical indications have been registered in Japan. But the EU has secured protection (officially “designated” geographical indications) for 21 new food names since February 1, 2021 — items 75–95 on this list (with 17 more apparently pending comment on this list). And according to the US Department of Agriculture, three new spirits and four new wines were also registered, although they are not yet listed in English on the official Japanese website.

The UK International Trade Department said on October 22, 2021 that discussions with Japan on protecting new names started early in the year. The UK shared its list with Japan on April 30. These British geographical indications “will now go through Japan’s procedures as quickly as possible,” the department said.

More on Japanese lists of registered names can be found below.

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TWO YEARS LATER: Still no new UK geographical indications registered in Japan. The number of the EU’s added names has increased by the previously-pending 17 to reach 38.

Ben Ramanauskas, a former adviser to Liz Truss and the UK International Trade Department, wrote this explanation on November 27, 2022:

“… After the negotiations were finalised I was tasked by Liz Truss (possibly as a punishment) to work on ensuring that the new Geographical Indications (GIs) were recognised by the Japanese Government. GIs essentially mean that certain UK products receive protected status in another country, so that there would be no imitation[*] Cheddar Cheese or Cornish Pasties being produced in Tokyo or Kyoto. This is all well and good, but could hardly be considered a priority given how economically insignificant many of the industries set to benefit are. The politics of it all matters unfortunately, and it makes for nice headlines especially if accompanied with a photo next to some flags.”

* Note “imitation” is not correct here. For protected geographical indications, imitation is allowed. Using the same name is not.

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THREE YEARS LATER: Still no new UK geographical indications registered in Japan (see The Guardian, May 21, 2023). Meanwhile, on September 27, 2023 the EU announced another list of protected names under its agreement with Japan, 42 altogether, about 30 of them EU names.

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The moral of this fable (as if we didn’t know already): Don’t count those Orpington chickens before they hatch. Don’t believe promises of a future agreement, or future deals under an existing agreement until they are delivered.

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Britain’s new trade agreement with Japan contains some improvements over the EU-Japan deal it rolls over, but some of London’s claims don’t stand up to scrutiny.

“It’s a roll-over of the EU deal with extra bits. And that’s a success too. That’s still better than we thought we’re going to get. Why not just say that?” tweeted trade advisor Anna Jerzewska.

She was commenting on the claim by International Trade Secretary Liz Truss that this “first trade agreement” for Britain “as an independent trading nation” has “major wins that would be impossible as part of the EU.”

Text of the UK-Japan trade deal: user-friendly download links

By Peter Ungphakorn
POSTED OCTOBER 24, 2020 | UPDATED JANUARY 25, 2021

The UK-Japan free trade agreement was signed in Tokyo on October 23, 2020. This page provides user-friendly links to download different chapters and annexes of the entire agreement.

Why do this? On the UK government’s website, the files are sub-divided somewhat arbitrarily — in particular the long files of goods schedules are split at arbitrary places, making it difficult to identify what each file contains.

The files linked here were taken from that website (on October 24, 2020), then redivided and in some cases recombined into chapters and annexes, and labelled accordingly.

This should also help in comparing the agreement, chapter by chapter, with the EU-Japan agreement (full details here).

Text of the UK-South Korea free trade agreement

Posted by Peter Ungphakorn
SEPTEMBER 3, 2019 | UPDATED SEPTEMBER 10, 2019

These are links to the text of the UK-South Korea free trade agreement, signed in London on August 22 and published on the South Korean Government website. It has been posted on that site in separate parts.

The longest sections are the schedule of commitments on goods (912 pages) and rules of origin (128 pages).

(A few days later, the texts were published on the British government website on September 10, along with an explanatory memorandum. A report to Parliament was published separately the previous day.

(See also an earlier piece on rolling over the EU-S.Korea free trade agreement. This deal does that, but the devil is in the detail.)

What have the UK and Switzerland agreed on trade post-Brexit?

By Peter Ungphakorn
POSTED FEBRUARY 5, 2019 | UPDATED JANUARY 27, 2021

A summary of this is on the EU Relations Law blog, here

What have the UK and Switzerland agreed on their trade relationship post-Brexit? Essentially, they have been partly “rolling over” to the UK the present Swiss-EU trade relationship.

EU agreements are being “rolled over” into UK agreements in order to allow as much continuity as possible for trade and for business. They are called “continuity agreements”.

Below are an introduction to the provisions on goods and services, followed by Swiss government summaries of key parts of its agreements with the UK, mainly on goods but also narrowly on services.

But first, some context and explanations.

Grandfathering EU free trade deals for the UK: a look at an actual text

By Peter Ungphakorn
FEBRUARY 13, 2018 | UPDATED JANUARY 1, 2021

Leaving the EU means the British government will either have to convert the EU’s free trade agreements with other countries into UK deals, or risk losing them, when Brexit is supposed to be about to allowing Britain more freedom to enjoy trade agreements with the world outside the EU.

At the very least, the UK should continue with the deals it already has through the EU, with Norway, Iceland, Switzerland, Canada, South Korea, Japan (in the pipeline) and many others. Academics at Sussex University say there are over 60 other countries. The UK government says there are over 100. It depends on what kind of agreement is counted.