UK Partnerships with Non EU Countries

At present, trade relationships between the UK and the rest of the world are managed through the EU’s common commercial policy. The policy has defined the UK’s trade regime vis a vis the rest of the world, through WTO commitments, through regional agreements conclude by the EU, and through unilateral preference schemes implemented by the EU.

On leaving the EU, the UK will exit the EU’s common commercial policy. It will then face a number of choices and challenges. In particular:

• How will it finalise its position at the WTO by extricating its commitments for the EU, particularly in areas such as agriculture subsidies and tariff-rate quotas, and in aspects of services trade?
• Should it continue to apply MFN tariffs it has inherited from the EU, or should it liberalise further? If so, should it do so unilaterally, on a non-discriminatory basis, or reciprocally, through free trade agreements?
• On services, where the UK, like many others, applies significantly lower levels of restrictions than are reflected in its WTO commitments, similar questions apply.
• What should the UK’s approach to trade preferences be?
• How should it establish priorities given limits to institutional capacity

These issues are not solely the UK’s. The EU itself will need to finalise its new schedules of commitments at the WTO. More broadly, the EU will also need to define its approach to trade policy, and this without the input of one its strongest liberalising influences.

The articles in this section assess these issues from a variety of perspectives, and provide a starting point for developing a new template for the UK’s trade policy.