The venue was a nice one - the CCA - Centre for Contemporary Art in Glasgow. And there was food provided as the talk was over lunchtime so that was a treat ! Finally I am benefiting from all that money I sent to the EU !! ;-) (only joking!)
While waiting for the talk I chatted to a few people around me and heard how they were here in their professional capacities to ask questions about the funding they get and how Brexit would affect them. They worked for a charity and for a council, and both receive a lot of EU funding. I hadn't heard about charities receiving EU funding and it was another of those "Just when you think Brexit seems bad it then just gets a whole lot worse" moments ! And the councils are working together to campaign for continuity of funding. Another person was talking about how she had noticed how much the EU had improved infrastructure in Scotland such as the pier to the island of Muck etc making it more possible to travel around Scotland. And someone else talked about some high flats in Glasgow which had been renovated with EU funding - the Broomhill flats.
The talk had originally been organised before an election was announced and the MEP was careful not to touch on anything that was too relevant to the election campaign.
Firstly he started by summarising his week at the European Parliament in Strasbourg. The topics are summarised in this video as the work that went on this week in Parliament
To expand:The takeaways from this week’s #EPlenary? Our video has the five numbers to remember pic.twitter.com/8COv60sPmd— European Parliament (@Europarl_EN) May 19, 2017
- With the refugee crisis, only Finland and Malta have so far taken their quota of refugees. Of the 160,000 that are due to find places, only 18,000 have so far been placed. (I am not sure if this is refugees or asylum seekers) Currently some countries are dragging their feet while others have categorically said they are not participating, and for those countries the European Parliament is now considering sanctions.
In addition, Hungary is currently curtailing the rights of people to protest. These are core principles of the EU. The first stage is to start an Article 7 - if this is implemented there will be sanctions and they will not be able to vote in European Council and could lose funds as well. Signals have been sent - maybe that will be enough to get things changed?
- Food Waste - there have been many ideas but one is that restaurants or supermarkets who give away free food when it reaches sell by date could receive a tax break for this.
- Rights Restrictions - There is a move to make it easier for you to continue to view your subscriber content across Europe if you are a registered user in a member state. So I imagine things like continuing to watch BBC content or video streaming from a channel etc whichever country you are in, as long as you are signed in.
- Protecting Children -in a similar way, there is to be a move to put an obligation on platforms to deal with the content if complaints are made and to have a requirement to make it easier to make complaints.
- Adverts on TV etc - there is to be restrictions on the amount of adverts ie no more than 20% of adverts vs action and also taking into account production placement in TV programmes etc
So it is business as usual at the European Parliament.
The 27 countries are united in their stance against Brexit and they took 2 minutes to agree the Brexit (negotiating?) guidelines
Article 50 was started on 29 March and this set a 2 year clock ticking.
Important Issues in the negotation.
Firstly the Rights of EU citizens of another member state.
A consensus seems to be arriving that the date that will be taken for being an EU citizen requiring an agreement will be that they were present in the UK on the 29th March. But... how do you prove that ? How do you prove they weren't just on holiday? or that they are here with a family member ? For example Belgium has ID cards so they can easily track people. We don't have this. He has been having to help out some people who have been here for a long time and had hit problems. For example a mother who had not worked but was married and had a family here for many years. And there were also situations mentioned from audience members later with people who are in stresstful situations of uncertainty around this.
The Issue of the Border between North and South of Ireland
There can be all sorts of problems with this and how it is organised re currency and customs union. There are a few main potential border points but the huge distance of the border I imagine could not be fully monitored !
And, for example, apparently the milk that goes into Baileys Irish cream goes across the border about six times during various stages of development.
He can remember back to border problems here when goods were traded using European Currency units (ECUs) before the Euro.
And, there is the Issue of the Settlement of Rights and Obligations.
Its not a "Brexit Bill"...
Its the ongoing payments for agreements we have entered into. Currently we have obligations until 2020 - social funds, structural funds, pensions, aid etc. There has been some acceptance of this in the Tory manifesto.
Michel Barnier wants to agree a methodology ...
And part of these commitments may well be ongoing due to contingencies (I guess that means unpredictability of certain things) as opposed to something you can just pay off.
My own speculation...
It will be interesting to hear what position the UK government takes in the negotiations - Theresa May has asked for people to vote for her to get a strong mandate ...but we don't yet know for sure what their position is ! Is it for a Hard Brexit or Soft Brexit ? We weren't asked this on the voting paper either !
Its hard to see other than that the long term effect of Brexit is that the economy will decline.
50% of our imports are from the EU and 44% of our exports. If we also add in all those countries that have preferential trade agreements then over 60% of our trade will be at a disadvantage to where we are today. If agreements go ahead between eg the EU and Japan, then 67% of our trade could be affected.
If we lost some of this trade we would need to make up an awful lot more from the rest of the world.
The "sunny uplands" of being "open to the world" are perhaps just too niave... We can currently trade with the rest of the world and there is nothing to stop us doing this. We export 16% to US, ??% with the BRICS economies (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) and 9.5% with the Commonwealth. Trade agreements will not happen overnight. It took 7 years for the Canada / EU agreement to be organised and Australia took 10 years for an agreement with China, which they particularly wanted - something to do with raw materials ......and.... India took many years to make an agreement with ASEA.
And it is said that a free trade agreement only makes trade increase 10% anyway.
Modern production means that products are rarely now wholly made in one country. Supply chains are in place and production must run smoothly with components being readily available to avoid any interruption of production. So smooth customs unions and single markets mean that supply chains work smoothly across the EU and its population of 500 million people. (I think this is called Just In time manufacturing). So for each component there is no need to check standards/environmental standards/labelling etc - all this has been organised in advance to set European standards.
He has heard from a major company that they cannot risk having part of their assembly in a country where there is any interruption due to regulatory or customs controls.
And for example even with an iPhone which we think of as being built in China (well I think of that)...then apparently 19% of it is put together in Europe.
An argument we have heard re: trade deals is that "Europe will be desperate to do a trade deal as we are such good customers etc" but for example think of the French farmers....they might well be happy to see tariffs slapped on UK agricultural produce.
However, even if no trade deal is done, there might be "customs facilitation" - where would need a bit of trust/goodwill etc. And for example electronic labelling makes it easy to track things across borders. His worry is with agriculture as this is where the so-called "third countries" have the greatest problems exporting into the EU. There are certain sanitary standards required for the produce and veterinary inspections would be required at ports. Initially it wont even be possible to do this until the facilities are available as this hasnt been needed for years on a large scale.
Mind you (in my opinion), animal rights in the EU could do with improvement as transport of live animals over these distances has to surely be queried - and do the animals have access to food/water etc on these journeys?
The feeling is that with regards to EU27 and free trade agreements is that they are not "out to get us", its more like currently they are shocked with "what on earth are you doing with this Brexit? what has happened to your country?!"
We are not allowed to negotiate agreements with other countries until we are through the Brexit - "loyal co-operation" ... so although Australia was keen to do a deal we cannot. But there is surely a conflict of interest where the UK can sit at negotiating table in EU talks with Australia and then use these snippets of information to formulate our own UK deal/adjust our own position with Australia...
Free trade agreements, though, only usually add 10% of trade. If we lose 5% (a conservative estimate), of our trade with the EU, we would have to increase trade with BRICS of 25% which would be a remarkable achievement ....
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Questions and discussion from the floor ..
Have they counted UK workers in Europe or just those living there ...
How long for Scotland if it was independent to get back into the EU? We would probably need to come out of the UK first then re-apply. We could then possibly be back within 2 years . Although Fishing is a big area of difficulty. And re: the Euro, we might have to sort of "say" we'd think about joining and then just not get round to it .... a tactic ...and then maybe avoid it - another guy there (I think from Sweden) said his country had not joined it.
There was a lady who worked in a Language school - the staff there are very concerned as they are EU citizens and do not know what is happening. In addition in that area of work it is very common to work freelance so this can make it difficult to prove you have worked or are continuing to work (I imagine) They have monthly Brexit chats there which sound interesting.
Someone said that at times they have a feeling they would like see the EU take Britain to the cleaners so we learn our place in the world as currently have an over-inflated opinion of ourselves. (I paraphrase here - but I do see their point as I would really like to see more "normal" people as representatives of the UK in our negotiations - people who are not arrogant and who do not take pleasure in winding other people up - but instead know how to get on with others !
And the converse of the EU workers in UK is that some folk know of UK workers on the continent who are desperately queuing to become a citizen of that country - we have all heard situations of this and we all know people affected. And in some cases we are all searching our family trees etc for Irish relatives or German relatives ! Unfortunately in my case my great grandfather came from Ireland but its a generation too far back ! (I think ... maybe I will look into it again !)
He has a sense of optimism re Citizenship
One problem is also that there are a lot of British people living in Spain and the Spanish government could end up with the responsibility for their healthcare which I imagine would be expensive. So although they do also contribute to the economy of Spain I imagine this could be a sticking poing.
And overall it sounds like a Trade Deal between the EU and UK in the given timescale makes it unlikely to happen.
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Aid is a big area - and it sounds like currently our Aid budget or at least some of it is distributed via European agencies and things like the excellent Medecins Sans Frontieres.
European Aid is the biggest Aid Agency in the World.
Britain has led the way in Aid and our experience has been acknowledged by the European Commissioner (?) ... So we may struggle to get our Aid out - and we might need to use eg Oxfam or something ...
We also have strong links historically with some countries and for example he had been speaking in Tanzania last week as an EU representative but some people there were like "why are you here - the UK has left already!) and I think he may have said that this stopped some deal happening - but I maybe misheard that...
Possibly we could still pay into it and similarly with Erasmus and Horizon 2020 (programmes that some in the audience had experience of). We have paid and can still be part of these until 2021 I think by the sounds of it/...
In some programmes we have been told to no longer apply but he thinks we should keep applying as still paying in. It might just be the Scottish government who are saying this.
The Tory manifesto may also have said we will aim to stay in Research programmes - I guess if we pay towards those.
So some small glimmers of hope I guess...
Africa ... trade
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