Maria Garcia is a Senior Lecturer in International Relations at the University of Bath; and Phil Tomlinson is a Professor of Industrial Strategy, Co-Director Centre for Governance, Regulation and Industrial Strategy (CGR&IS) also at the University of Bath. This article extract is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the full original article here.
The UK and EU have announced a range of historic and wide-ranging new agreements touching on trade, defence and borders.
Since the 2016 Brexit vote, COVID and conflict have changed the global economic landscape dramatically – with consumers feeling the effects every day. So the time could be ripe for a “reset” of relations between the UK and its largest trading partner.
Beyond trade, the two sides have agreed to negotiate further on a youth mobility scheme. And in future, travellers with UK passports will be able to use e-gates and avoid lengthy queues in some European countries.
But the agreement is also fraught with political risk, as opposition parties circle to capitalise on the vexxed question of tighter UK-EU relations. We asked a panel of experts for their analysis of the announcements.
Fisheries agreement unlocks path to ‘reset’
Maria Garcia, Senior Lecturer in International Relations, University of Bath
These were the first steps towards the much-vaunted Labour UK-EU “reset”. The announcement of agreements between the UK and EU covered security, energy and fisheries.
But the announcement falls short of key UK priorities for the reset, which includes a series of measures to facilitate trade with what is still the UK’s largest trade partner and market. The bloc represented 48% of UK goods exports, 36% of services exports, and 51% of goods imports in 2024.
Fisheries represent roughly 5% of UK agriculture, fisheries and forestry exports, and 0.03% of the UK economy. That may be a smaller slice of GDP than many people might think. But given the regional concentration of the fishing industry, it is vitally important to those communities. The situation is the same in EU countries.
Fisheries was a difficult issue to tackle in the negotiations for the 2021 UK-EU trade and cooperation agreement (TCA). Under the TCA, the EU agreed to phase out 25% of its catch share in British waters.
And there was an understanding on permits to fish species subject to fishing quotas that would allow fleets to fish in each others’ waters. The terms of this were due to expire in June 2026.
French president Emmanuel Macron insisted that without a deal on fisheries he would not accept other areas of the reset. And North Sea countries joined the call to negotiate a deal on fish. This represented a difficult ask for the UK government, given fierce criticism from opposition parties.
This agreement settles access to fisheries for the next 12 years. Despite its limited economic impact in absolute terms, the political significance should not be underestimated. It is a clear signal of the Starmer government’s commitment to move forward in the relationship with the EU – particularly relevant at a time of complicated global trading relations.
Other proposed measures include waiving the requirement to submit safety declarations, agreement on sanitary and phytosanitary (SPS) measures and a veterinary agreement to facilitate agricultural trade. These matters are included in the newly published memo in which the UK and EU commit to work towards agreement on SPS. However, there is no announcement as to when this might be finalised.
But the settlement on fisheries means an important hurdle has been overcome on the path towards the reset.
A security pact for a changed world
Phil Tomlinson, Professor of Industrial Strategy, University of Bath
Defence was hardly mentioned in Boris Johnson’s 2021 EU-UK trade and cooperation agreement. But the world has changed – especially over the last six months. The US no longer appears willing to guarantee Europe’s security.
The new EU-UK defence and security pact recognises the current state of geopolitics and seeks to mitigate Russian and other external threats by investing in European defence capabilities, at scale.
For UK defence and defence-related firms – many of which are already global leaders in the field – this is an opportunity to participate in a £150 billion defence fund called Security Action for Europe (SAFE). Since the end of the cold war, UK and European defence spending has fallen significantly, relative to GDP.
This new pact, and the heightened focus on defence, should support UK jobs and bring growth to places across the country. This is not only true for arms manufacturers such as BAE Systems and Babcock, but in related sectors such as cybersecurity which are of increasing strategic national importance.
This also opens up the potential for more synergies and spillovers in several industrial strategy priority areas – for instance, between the defence sector and digital, and between AI and cyber technologies. To take advantage, the UK government’s new industrial strategy will need to provide substantive support for skills in these sectors.
The news that British steel exports will be protected from new EU rules and tariffs is also welcome. The UK steel industry faces an uncertain future, with the challenges posed by the transition to net zero and the crises at Port Talbot and Scunthorpe. But this is a critical sector – with steel a crucial input for UK infrastructure and its defence industry.
All articles posted on this blog give the views of the author(s), and not the position of the IPR, nor of the University of Bath.
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