The UK may end up leaving the EU without agreeing a deal on future access to the single market, former taoiseach John Bruton has warned.
He said the UK and Europe’s negotiating positions were so far apart that there was no way of predicting the outcome of talks once the formal exit mechanism is triggered.
And if no deal is brokered within two years, Mr Bruton said the UK will simply be out of the EU with no rights at all on the EU market beyond those enjoyed by any state anywhere in the world.
In an address to the Irish Creamery Milk Suppliers Association (ICMSA), the former EU ambassador described this as a “doomsday scenario” with grave consequences for trade on both sides of the Irish Sea.
Agreement
Once the withdrawal negotiations end, he said agreeing a future trade deal will be even harder for Britain as it will probably have to be unanimously agreed by all 27 EU states and their parliaments.
The EU’s recent trade deal with Canada was nearly scuttled at the last minute by Belgium because of opposition from its regional parliaments.
“A similar threat to an agreement with the UK could come from a decision to call a referendum in a member state,” Mr Bruton said, noting the future of an EU agreement with Ukraine has been put in doubt by its defeat in a referendum in the Netherlands.
In his address, he also spoke of the threat to the food sector here, which was most exposed to Brexit, noting the re-introduction of tariffs could result in business failures and job losses.
“The tariff issue will be particularly difficult in the food sector, because this is the sector in which the EU has the highest tariffs, and restrictions, on third country imports in order to protect the incomes of EU farmers,” he said.
“Everything depends on what sort of food and agriculture policy the UK decides to follow outside the EU. Will they go for a ‘cheap food’ policy like they had before they joined the EU 40 years ago or will they retain current supports for farmers and rural life?” Mr Bruton said.
Referendum
The former Fine Gael leader said immigration was not, initially, one of the UK’s complaints about the EU, noting the Tony Blair-led government actually opened the UK to central and eastern European EU immigrants, in 2004, before it was obliged to under the accession treaties for those countries.
However, he said during the Brexit referendum campaign, immigration became the central debating point and leaving the EU was presented as the way of “taking back control” of immigration.
Mr Bruton said the UK already had full “control” over 45 per cent of all immigration which came from non-EU countries, noting “and the minister who exercised that control then, the home secretary, is now the prime minister” .
“But in politics, perception is sometimes more important than reality, and immigration from the EU is perceived to be a problem by UK voters,” he said.
Separately, the ICMSA president John Comer told the AGM, which was attended by Minister for Agriculture Michael Creed, that Ireland could not “stand idly by” while decisions that went to the very core of our State’s economic prospects were debated without reference to the critical importance and ancient commercial ties between Irish food production and their UK markets.
He said the preservation of food exports to the UK on a tariff-free basis must be the guiding principle of Ireland’s Brexit negotiations.
Mr Comer said it was impossible to over-state the dangers presented to our flagship food sector’s exports to the UK by a new system of tariffs, customs-clearance and the persistence of sterling devaluation relative to the Euro.
