Brexit: Digest of business-focussed articles from national and international media, selected by George Hamilton. Some may require a subscription to obtain the full version (paywall). Headlines in this issue
- NI business to new NI Secretary: keep promises on GB-NI trade barriers
- A no-deal Brexit will hit NI consumers hardest
- No-deal Brexit? UK trade talks mandate revealed: we won’t abide by EU rules
- Government must ensure government’s Brexit trade barrier promise is kept: NI business leaders
The new Secretary of State Brandon Lewis has been urged to ensure the government honours its promise to avoid barriers to trade to and from Great Britain following Brexit.
Business leaders said Mr Lewis was inheriting the post of Secretary of State at a critical time for Northern Ireland.
Stephen Kelly, the chief executive of Manufacturing NI, urged Mr Lewis to ensure the Assembly and Executive were sustainable by delivering on the financial commitments made by the UK government in the New Decade, New Approach deal.
Belfast Telegraph 17 Feb
North’s consumers will be ‘hardest hit’ if UK fails to secure EU deal
Northern Ireland consumers will be “hit hardest” if the UK fails to secure “pragmatic solutions on future compliance and regulatory checks” in the UK-EU Brexit negotiations, a leading industry retail body has warned.
Aodhán Connolly, director of the Northern Ireland Retail Consortium (NIRC), said because people in the North have half of the discretionary income of households in Britain they “simply can’t afford costs rises” as a result of Brexit.
Mr Connolly is urging the UK government to adopt a roadmap set out in a new report published by the NIRC’s sister organisation, the British Retail Consortium (BRC) on Monday which he said would help to protect consumers in the UK and Northern Ireland.
The BRC’s “A Fair Deal for Consumers: EU Trade Roadmap” advocates a number of key “mitigations” which the retail industry group is confident could reduce the potential impact of Brexit on consumers and the industry.
Irish Times 17 Feb
We won’t budge on escaping EU rules, says UK’s Brexit negotiator
The democratic consent of the British public would “snap dramatically and finally” if the UK continued to be tied to EU rules, Boris Johnson’s chief Brexit negotiator has said.
In his first public speech since his appointment to the role, David Frost said Downing Street was not engaging in game-playing by rejecting alignment with EU laws after 2020.
In a significant opening to Brussels, Frost conceded that the negotiators would need to build on the models contained in other EUfree trade deals.
But he insisted that the ability to break free from the EU’s rulebook was essential to the purpose of Brexit and that the UK’s position would be tabled in “written form” next week. “We are not looking for anything special,” he said.
The EU’s negotiating mandate is due to be finalised on 25 February. A draft document published this month indicated that Brussels would seek at least “non-regression” from current environmental, social and workers’ standards once the UK has left the single market and customs union on 31 December 2020.
Guardian 17 Feb
