The EU and Great Britain continue to negotiate. While companies are already making provisions for the no deal, Boris Johnson’s government is not making it. That has an impact.
Boris Johnson beamed into the camera on Sunday: “We are more than adequately prepared. We have been working on it for four and a half years: Whatever is decided now, Britain will do very, very well,” said the British Prime Minister.
In reality, the consequences of a so-called no deal for the UK would be dire. This threatens if the British government and the EU cannot agree on a free trade agreement by the end of the year and trade between the EU and the UK is suddenly subject to tariffs from January.
On Sunday, the President of the EU Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, and Johnson announced that negotiations would continue for the time being. But Johnson was talking again about how wonderful it would be if the UK stepped out of the EU after the one-year transition period to “Australian terms”.
It is deliberately misleading: “We have no agreement with the EU and therefore massive difficulties in trade,” warned the former Prime Minister of Australia, Malcolm Turnbull, to British television viewers last week.
But Johnson plays serenity, which the UK economy can’t afford. “We still have a few working days and do not even know whether we will be subject to tariffs,” said Ian Wright of the British Food and Beverage Industry Association recently, with a view to the end of the one-year transition period: “Many companies do not know whether theirs will be Production in the new year will be expected at all.
” At the weekend, the British newspapers were filled with special pages listing what the British women face in the event of a no-deal: 14 percent tariffs on tomatoes from the EU, 16 percent on cucumbers, 48 percent on minced beef, 57 percent on cheese; Britain imports 60 percent of its food in winter.
