Category Archives: Brexit

A small error in the paperwork a box ticked by mistake and the tanker of butter oil was held at French customs for five days, with veterinary authorities at the border threatening to destroy it. The debacle nearly cost the tankers exporter, dairy company County Milk, a six-figure sum. After fraught negotiations, the cargo was eventually repatriated.

You dont need too many of those to be destroyed and you are in dire straits, says Phil Langslow, trading director at County Milk, the UKs largest privately owned dairy ingredients business.

While trade from Britain to the EU has begun to recover from the Brexit disruption earlier this year, some sectors are still in trouble, none more so than the dairy industry.

Exports plummeted in February for a second month, HMRC figures showed last week, with milk and cream experiencing the largest post-Brexit loss out of the top 10 foodstuffs sold to the continent.

Analysis of the figures by the Food and Drink Federation (FDF) showed milk and cream exports to the EU fell by 97%, compared with a year earlier, with just 900,000 worth of product exported, compared with more than 24m in February 2020.

Cheese exports for February tumbled from 41m to 14.5m, a slide of 65%, although this was an improvement on the figures recorded in January, when the category collapsed by 85%.

Dairy firms say they face a killer combination of increased costs, complexity and paperwork required to export products such as butter, cream and cheese to the EU since Brexit, with some in the industry fearing the current slowdown risks becoming permanent.

Like meat and other products of animal origin, dairy requires some of the most stringent checks, certificates and documentation.

A vet has to inspect the produce and stamp paperwork before it can depart for the continent, while traders have to input details into several databases. If there are any errors in the documents, or a load is rejected by EU customs authorities, delivery can be significantly delayed and, in the worst case, re-exported back to Britain, or even destroyed.

One of the top 10 players in the UK, in a sector dominated by multinationals, County Milk used to export around 15 tankers of cream to the EU each week before Brexit. Since January that has dropped by three-quarters, to three or four tankers.

Trading costs have increased, while transport is often hit by delays, and the uncertainty of delivery means some European customers are offering lower prices for British dairy products.

Langslow said County Milk doesnt yet know the true cost of Brexit for the firm.

What we are seeing is, it is substantially different and significant enough to just not make it [exporting] viable in a number of cases, he said.

During the UKs membership of the EU, dairy trade was a two-way street. British consumers developed a taste for continental cheeses, from French brie and Italian mozzarella to Dutch gouda and Greek feta.

However, European consumers also enjoy British cheddar, while UK-produced cream, butter and cheese are ingredients in many foods manufactured in the EU, including ice-cream and biscuits.

The UK is a net importer, but dairy exports were worth 1.4bn to the UK in 2019, of which the vast majority (86%) went to the EU, while just 246m was exported to the rest of the world, according to HMRC figures.

Not everyone is concerned. Trade body Dairy UK says export data will improve over the coming months. The normal patterns of trade are resuming as the market smooths itself out, and the national statistics should shortly catch up with the short-term changes, Dairy UK said.

Others in the industry remain unconvinced.

Andrew Kuyk, director general of the Provision Trade Federation, which speaks for the dairy and pig meat trade, fears the dairy sectors difficulties are not just teething problems.

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Its a killer combination of the extra cost and the time and the unpredictability. If you knew it was going to cost you more but it would get there in six hours, eight hours, whatever, you could work round that, Kuyk said.

You cannot run a viable business on the basis that four in five loads will get there unscathed. We are talking about an industry where margins are single figures.

Overseas customers may begin to turn to suppliers in other EU member states, who can guarantee on-time deliveries. If excess supply remains in the UK, it could also drive down prices, impacting farmers at home.

New Markets may open up in the Middle East and Asia, but exporting there may prove just as complex, says Kuyk. If we are struggling to get it into Calais, how easy is it going to be get it into Beijing, or Tokyo?

Read more here:

UK dairy firms try to count the cost of churn in post-Brexit trade - The Guardian

Traditionally, Europe is the issue that afflicts the Conservative party. Margaret Thatcher, John Major, David Cameron and Theresa May were all in different ways booted out of Downing Street as a result of Britains troubled relationship with Europe.

The political pattern has now been turned on its head. It will be five years next month since the UK voted narrowly to leave the European Union, and the Tories have accepted the result and moved on. Labour now says that it is reconciled to a post-Brexit future, but its predicted defeat in the Hartlepool byelection suggests the new approach has failed to convince.

Labour is now more fundamentally split over Europe than the Tories were under Thatcher and Major. The bulk of the partys supporters voted remain and still feel strongly that the result of the referendum was bad for Britain. A significant minority, concentrated in towns such as Hartlepool, voted leave and have resented being told that they got it wrong.

Responsibility for this rift lies primarily with the hardline remainer element in the party, which, having gifted the Tories one election victory, now looks set to hand them the next one as well. A series of political blunders has made it much harder for Labour to piece together the electoral coalition it needs to win.

Immediately after the referendum, the assumption was that leave voters would quickly regret what they had done and show buyers remorse. When that didnt happen, Labour remainers threw their weight behind the campaign for a peoples vote, a second chance for those who had got it wrong first time to come up with the right answer. This culminated in Labours worst general election performance since 1935 and a much harder Brexit than would otherwise have been the case.

After becoming leader last spring, Keir Starmer said Labour must accept that things had not panned out as those who backed a peoples vote had hoped. Yet the remainer left kept up the fight. Its conviction that life outside the EU would be disastrous was apparently confirmed when the government decided to organise its own vaccine procurement programme separate from Brussels. As talks on a new trade deal rumbled on into the autumn of 2020 there were confident predictions that the economy would collapse, supermarkets would run short of food and the M20 would become a lorry park.

None of this has happened. Instead, there have been two key messages from the early months of 2021. The first is that the EUs botched vaccine procurement has delayed economic recovery and cost lives. A fact that tends to be overlooked by its devotees is that the EUs attempts at central planning have not been awfully impressive. The second is that there can be big advantages to independence of action for nation states, something leavers on the left have argued for decades.

The lefts case for Brexit has always been that there are levers that can be pulled tax, state aid, infrastructure spending, active industrial policies that would start to tackle Britains longstanding economic problems, but it will be the Conservatives who have the chance to pull them for years to come.

A heavy degree of scepticism is warranted when it comes to Boris Johnsons levelling up agenda, but it is worth thinking for a moment how things look from Hartlepool and places like it. Around 1.7m jobs were lost in manufacturing under the 1997-2010 Labour government. London and the south east boomed while the Midlands and the north struggled. When voters in industrial Britain made their unhappiness about being forgotten known in the Brexit referendum, they were patronised and vilified. The government, through infrastructure investment, the siting of vaccine plants in the north east and the relocation of part of the Treasury out of London is at least seen to be doing something. And, apart from carping, what is Labour offering? Fair or not, thats how things look to many in what were once red wall seats.

Labours future now lies in the hands of its remainer supporters, because they have to decide whether their strategy is to work for Britain to rejoin the EU, or whether they want to help develop the policies that will help make Brexit work.

The first approach, if not doomed, will certainly be a long haul. Britain only joined the European Economic Community, as it then was, because it was obvious that the Germans, French and Dutch were enjoying faster growth in living standards. That no longer holds true, because even on the most pessimistic Brexit assumptions, the UK will have similar levels of growth and lower unemployment than the EU. Remainers often give the impression that they welcome bad economic news on the grounds that it makes rejoining the EU more feasible. This is not a good political look.

Alternatively, remainers can allow Labour to re-coalesce around the following propositions: Brexit has settled the UKs relationship with the EU for years if not decades to come; there are advantages as well as disadvantages to life outside the EU; there is a duty to improve the lives of those who voted to leave in June 2016.

Accepting this is not going to be easy, because for many left remainers, belief in the EU runs deep. But at the moment they act as a purely negative force because by making it harder for Labour to heal its wounds they are making it easier for the Conservatives to turn Britain into a one-party state.

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Until Labour remainers properly accept Brexit, the party will be stuck in limbo - The Guardian

Brexit has been thwarting enterprise operations across the supply chain for five months now. Businesses on both sides of the UK/EU border are still adjusting to the new Brexit arrangements, with further problematic rule changes and restrictions pending in just a few months time.

The post-Brexit reality for many organisations is one of increased storage costs, late delivery penalties and, in the case of perishable goods, more wastage.There is also considerable pressure being imposed upon supply chain workers due to the extra requirements for importing and exporting, which is causing long hours, stress and anxiety. One major international supply chains solution company told me of a colossal 500% increase in the volume of work in the UK alone, far greater than the 40% increase among its European counterparts.

To put the issue into context, it is estimated that businesses in the supply chain will need to process an additional 200 million customs declarations each year, compared with roughly 55 million before Brexit. It is plain for all to see that these outdated and cumbersome processes are causing significant disruption to our supply chains.

As such, the importing and exporting of goods and services is becoming too transactional, with little time for businesses and their suppliers to collaborate and form solid working relationships. Communication is becoming more disjointed. Each organisation is relying on siloed systems, making it almost impossible to share information in real-time. And, with an over-reliance on email to communicate, its extremely difficult to track every stage of the supply chain journey.

All of this carries risk and leaves the supply chain open to errors that could cost businesses even more time and money. For example, incorrectly inputting a weight or date can trigger a communication back to the supplier to seek correction, causing a delay to the item being shipped. If one small sub-shipment is wrong, it can hold up an entire shipment at customs.

It begs the question: can technology help to free the supply chain from this post-Brexit process pain? The answer is a resounding yes.

Cloud-based collaboration and communication tools are incredibly important in helping to eliminate time-wasting and energy-sapping processes. They can replace email and break down silos, enabling teams to work together closely on projects. We will also see Artificial Intelligence (AI) play a central role over the coming year. AI can handle basic cognitive tasks more quickly than humans, empowering supply chain teams to communicate faster and with better data at their fingertips.

The latest AI technology has the power to automatically analyse incoming documents and email, identify relevant information and instantly assign actions. Whats more, it can automate the entry of data required to fill in customs and freight documents saving hours of time and stress. And, because modern AI approaches have a feedback loop that learns over time, they are more robust and dynamic than off-the-shelf Optical Character Recognition (OCR)-only approaches.

Essentially, by automating monotonous tasks like answer that email, key in that data and find that piece of information, employees can reduce the time spent on administrative tasks such as processing documentation for various import and export checks. It means they can focus on building relationships with people in their supply chain network, improving their customer service and freeing up time to focus on business development. Not only will this lead to better and more profitable businesses, but happier team members freed from process pain. And, crucially, it will ensure traceability in an industry that is subject to strict regulatory scrutiny. Businesses will be able to track the origin and journey of their goods throughout the supply chain.

Its, therefore, no surprise that a new vector.ai poll shows 75% of freight forwarders think technology could remove some of the burdens on staff responsible for managing the extra processes. Arguably, AI could be the silver bullet the supply chain so desperately needs, helping businesses introduce reliable, more streamlined ways of working. One freight forwarder which used AI for its first transaction, for example, reduced a typically 40 minute-long task down to just four minutes.

Of course, businesses will still be subject to more processes and complexity across their supply chains in the post-Brexit world. But with the right AI tools, these processes neednt be slow, error-prone and expensive. By bringing supply chains into the digital age, it is possible to rescue businesses from the extra process pain and focus on improving their import/export profitability.

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Can AI Rescue the Supply Chain from Post-Brexit Process Pain | Digital Supply Chain - Supply Chain Digital - The Procurement & Supply Chain...

Both average compensation and employee numbers soared at JPMorgan's German-based business last year as Brexit approached.

In its newly released report for JPMorgan AG during 2020, JPMorgan says headcount at the German-based entity went from an average of 361 in 2019 to an average of 626 in 2020. Spending on wages and salaries went from46m to145m over the same period, with the resultthat pay for the average employee of JPM AG rose from129k to232k.

In notes accompanying the report, JPMorgan saidthe increased headcount and spending on staff at the business was due to Brexit and that last year was all about, "controlled expansion." However, while most investment bankers were moved to the German business by 1 January 2021,JPMorgan says the full implementation of the Brexit program in global markets - in terms of the movement of trading books and staff - is only expected by December 2021.

Not all the new employees of JPMorgan AG are in Frankfurt. Equally,Frankfurt didn't experience the biggest growth in staff numbers in 2020, although it's where most employees are concentrated. As the chart below shows, JPMorgan added 45 people in Frankfurt last year, along with78 in Paris and 60 in other 'locations'. Notably, there are also JPMorgan AG people in London.

Alongside wages and salaries, employees of JPMorgan's German entity also received share-based payments totalling39m last year, up from8.5m the year before.

Photo by Ansgar Scheffold on Unsplash

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Pay and headcount soar at JPMorgan Germany thanks to Brexit - eFinancialCareers

Northern Ireland was rocked by street violence last month and there is anger in unionist communities at how the post-Brexit protocol has disrupted trade with England, Wales and Scotland. The UK Government considers prosperity the bedrock to peace in Northern Ireland and is concerned that businesses and consumers are struggling. It says the present disruption s not sustainable. Alarm is so great that a Whitehall source warned that nothing can be left off the table.

Fury at the erection of a de facto border in the Irish Sea is a key reason why Arlene Foster has been forced to quit as First Minister and DUP leader, and the row is believed to have strengthened opponents of the Good Friday Agreement which underpins power-sharing at Stormont.

The protocol is designed to avoid customs checks along the Irish border but trust was badly damaged in January when the EU moved to block the export of Covid-19 vaccines to Northern Ireland. The decision was reversed but the EUs willingness to use override the protocol using its Article 16 emergency provisions during a health crisis caused cross-party shock.

A Whitehall source said: We over-estimated the EUs ability to be reasonable, particularly after the damage caused by the unilateral action in January. After so much work to achieve finely balanced compromise, their actions are destabilising things on the ground in Northern Ireland.

No Government can stand by as businesses and consumers struggle. If we cannot find pragmatic solutions, nothing can be left off the table.

The UK Government says it still believes the protocol can work as intended but is concerned it will prove unsustainable if the EUs only concern is protecting the single market. It warns that consent for the protocol is fragile and instead of supporting the Good Friday Agreement it now risks undermining it.

Anti-Agreement unionists are seen to be growing in force with pro-Agreement unionists also coming out strongly against it.

A senior Government source said: The protocol was always a delicate balance. We made huge compromises, in the best possible spirit, to avoid a hard border and protect the Good Friday Agreement listening to the genuine concerns raised by Brexit.

The protocol does many good things, but the balance that the protocol sought to achieve is under risk and the UKs internal market is being undermined.

There is alarm in London at what it sees as a hardening of position by the EU, with Brussels treating the regulatory border in the Irish Sea like any other external EU border.

A senior government source said: We have been trying to make this work since it came into effect by de-dramatising and focusing on the practicalities. However, the abortive triggering of Article 16 has been hugely destabilising and the EU still does not realise the damage they have caused.

It took the moral force out of the protocol in one move and completely undermined Arlene Fosters attempt to make it work. The EUs attempts to airbrush their actions and suggest that it was just an inadvertent mistake has, for many, suggested that the EUs concerns about preserving stability in Northern Ireland were merely skin deep.

A European Commission spokesman said: The protocol was the solution that we found with the UK Government to avoid a hard border on the island of Ireland and to protect the gains of the peace process and the Good Friday (Belfast) Agreement. If we are to achieve these goals, then the protocol needs to be faithfully implemented.

We have said that we are open to finding flexible solutions that are in line with the protocol. We continue to engage constructively with the UK government.

A legal challenge against the protocol backed by senior unionists and coordinated by former Brexit Party MEP Ben Habib is expected to be heard at Belfasts high court from May 14.Mr Habib is confident that the protocol breaches a raft of legislation, including the Act of Union.

Jim Shannon, a DUP MP, urged Boris Johnson to use Article 16 and bring an end to the protocol. He said businesses and customers were suffering major delays and extra costs as a result and the economy had been damaged.

The Strangford MP said he was contacted daily by people suffering problems due to the protocol.

He called for the PM to bring the whole thing to an end the quicker the better.

Read more from the original source:

Brexit fury as EU 'hardens position' - Boris braced to axe protocol over rising violence - Express

Brexit may have happened - but it continues to redraw the electoral map of England.

It's not the only thing however, that appears to be behind changing voting patterns.

With votes still being counted, this is what the data is telling us about why people voted.

In wards that voted heavily to leave the EU in 2016, the Conservatives are making large gains and Labour are experiencing losses.

Just like in December 2019, Labour is seeing particularly large falls in its vote in areas that voted by over 60% for Brexit.

How to read the above chart?

Dots clustered on the left are wards with the smallest proportion of Leave voters. Here, Labour's vote has risen. On the right, however, are dots revealing wards where Labour's vote has fallen sharply. These wards also contain high numbers of people who voted to leave the EU.

There have been large regional differences in voting patterns. The Conservatives have increased vote share in West Midlands and Yorkshire & The Humber. Labour has done better in the South East.

These ward results also reveal a deep polarisation by education in the electorate. The Conservatives have advanced most in areas with fewer graduates.

The Conservatives have also done well in wards with more people employed in routine occupations.

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Election results: Brexit, jobs and education: Five charts which reveal how people voted - Sky News

Politicians are badly letting down the electorate, and more than ever we need a coherent opposition.

UK politics has failed us badly and the people know it. But opposition politicians have swallowed the Brexit pill and say we are in a long game.

Labours loss in Hartlepool shows that our political landscape needs restorative action fast. People are increasingly questioning Keir Starmers lack of vision as he doggedly follows an agenda rather than shaping it. The full-page advert from over 15 Rejoin campaign groups in this weeks illustrates the leadership vacuum in opposition thinking.

The pandemic and Brexit have opened a mass of uncertainties as we face increasing social, economic and environmental pressures. Challenges that far and away transcend the complacent stance of a government out of touch with reality. It hasnt even delivered control of our borders, despite being a top concern in the referendum.

Casting adrift in an interconnected world of power blocks is a monumental error when insteadwe couldignite ambition for reform with our European partners. We have been stripped of our European citizenship on the feeblest of margins by a government unable to think sanely about the future as our economy slumps and hundreds of UK companies relocate to Europe. The amazing possibilities touted by Johnson are turning into the realisation that we face rough times for years ahead.

Yet the government is planning to waste 120 million on a Brexit festival. It may blow another 190 million on a flag-waving new royal yacht and plans for upgrading the UKs Trident nuclear fleet, estimated to cost 200 billion, when terrorists kill at will on our streets, continue.

More than ever we need a coherent opposition alliance that offers an inspiring agenda focused on campaigning for a green new deal and a complete overhaul of our failing politics. Brexit sensitivities can be side-stepped, when there is so much to go for.Britains first past the post system denies fair electoral representation. The Electoral Reform Society describes it as disenfranchisement on an industrial scale.

An unrepresentative upper House, a corrupt and devalued Honours system, tax havens and speculator-driven financial markets have allfailed Britain.

Phil Green

Have your say by emailing theneweuropean@archant.co.uk. Our deadline for letters is Tuesday at 9am for inclusion in Thursdays edition. Please be concise - letters over five paragraphs long may be edited before printing.

Original post:

Labour should never have swallowed the Brexit pill - The New European

JPMorgan Chase & Co. is further expanding its balance sheet in Frankfurt as it adapts to a post-Brexit Europe.

The U.S. bank expects to add a similar amount to its European hub in 2021 as it did last year, according to its annual report forJ.P. MorganAG. The unit increased by about 180 billion euros (US$216 billion) to 244 billion euros last year, the document said, confirming an earlier Bloombergreport.

JPMorgan has led its Wall Street peers in shifting assets out of London as the U.K. exited the European Union. It has repeatedly said it expects its EU unit to gain market share in areas including trading, investment banking and commercial banking.

We plan to complete the Brexit program by the end of 2021, JP Morgan said in the report. Together with the expansion of our existing business activities, we expect that the size of our balance sheet this year could increase similarly to the previous year.

London Falling

Londons future as a financial center has been in the spotlight after Brexit came into effect at the start of the year. Trading in European shares quickly moved away from the British capital while hopes for unhindered access to EU markets -- via a process known as equivalence -- have long gone.

The full long-term impact is still unclear. JPMorgans Chief Executive Officer Jamie Dimon, a long-time critic of Brexit, warned this year he could ultimately shift all bankers serving EU clients out of London.

Read more aboutBrexitsimpact on the City of London

Other banks to beef up in Germanys financial hub include Goldman Sachs Group Inc., Citigroup Inc., UBS Group AG and Standard Chartered Plc. A report by consultancy EY has estimated that about 900 billion pounds ($1.2 trillion) of assets have also shifted to the EU from the U.K., along with about 7,500 employees.

Boersen-Zeitung first reported on JPMorgans expansion.

See more here:

JPMorgan to move another US$200B in assets on Brexit - BNN

A Northern Ireland minister has threatened legal action against the UK and the EU over post-Brexit trading arrangements.

Edwin Poots, who is running to replace the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) leader Arlene Foster, told Stormont the Northern Ireland Protocol "ultimately needs to go".

To ensure there is no land border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland, Northern Ireland continues to follow many EU rules but that means a new "regulatory" border was formed between it and Great Britain.

There has been a grace period since the Brexit deal came into force at the beginning of the year but there have still been delays on some goods arriving in Northern Ireland's shops due to the checks.

Mr Poots, the country's agriculture minister, said there are estimates of 15,000 checks on goods per week at the region's ports once grace periods for the new rules have ended.

He said a top QC has been appointed and is "currently scrutinising every aspect of that protocol".

"On completion of that piece of work, it is my intention to lodge judicial proceedings against the protocol," he said.

"I would hope that the Department for Economy, and the Department for Health, because this is having major implications for both medicines and medical devices, will join with me in taking an action against the European Union and the UK government for the damage that it is inflicting on all of the people of Northern Ireland."

Mr Poots said he has not "authorised" any new infrastructure to carry out the checks.

"This has been imposed by Westminster, paid for by Westminster to placate the demands of Dublin and indeed the pro-Protocol parties, that is Sinn Fein, the SDLP and the Green Party and as a result every consumer will feel the pain of this protocol," he said.

In March, the EU threatened legal action over Britain's decision to extend Irish Sea border grace periods, set to finish at the end of March, until October.

The UK defended its actions, calling the move "temporary and technical steps" which "largely" continue measures already in place.

At the time, the DUP's Westminster leader, Sir Jeffrey Donaldson, said while supermarkets and those bringing in goods via Northern Ireland's ports from Great Britain would be "relieved" with the extension, it did not provide "long-term certainty".

"The protocol has been demonstrated to be unworkable," he added.

Excerpt from:

Northern Ireland agriculture minister threatens legal action over post-Brexit trading - Sky News

Unionist leaders who negotiated the Good Friday Agreement have written an open letter calling for the suspension of the Northern Ireland Protocol.

he letter has been sent to British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, Taoiseach Michel Martin, US President Joe Biden and Maros Sefcovic of the European Commission.

It is signed by, among others, Lord David Trimble, the former Ulster Unionist Party leader who was jointly awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1998, alongside John Hume, for their efforts in securing peace in Northern Ireland.

The letter states that unionists involved in negotiating the peace deal secured community support on the basis that the constitutional position of Northern Ireland would not be changed without their consent.

It adds: "The imposition of the Northern Ireland Protocol has breached all of these core guarantees and safeguards of the agreement.

"The status of Northern Ireland is not what it was prior to the Protocol taking effect, therefore it has changed, and changed without the consent of the people of Northern Ireland."

The Protocol agreed after Brexithas been the source of tension in unionist communities for months because it places a border between Northern Ireland and the rest of the United Kingdom, in the Irish sea.

They accuse the leaders who have implemented the Protocol of "exceptional anti-democratic behaviour".

"A fundamental principle of international law is respect for the territorial integrity of a country," it states.

"The Protocol completely disrespects the territorial integrity of the United Kingdom.

"Consequently, you are collectively guilty of exceptional anti-democratic behaviour, of breaking a fundamental principle of international law and are imperilling the very peace process you claim to want to protect and preserve."

The Protocol was negotiated and implemented by Boris Johnson as an alternative to the "backstop" for avoiding a hard border between Northern Ireland and the Republic.

The letter concludes: "We expect you to now suspend the Northern Ireland Protocol forthwith and engage with the representatives of the people of Northern Ireland to agree new arrangements which are consistent with the guarantees and provisions of the Belfast Agreement and which command the support of both communities in Northern Ireland."

Other signatories include Lord Maginnis, Lord Empey, Lord Kilclooney, Dermot Nesbitt and David Campbell, who were all in the Ulster Unionist Party at the time of 1998 agreement.

It was also signed by Billy Hutchinson of the Progressive Unionist Party and Gary McMichael, former leader of the now defunct Ulster Democratic Party.

Originally posted here:

Good Friday Agreement unionists call for scrapping of Northern Ireland Brexit Protocol - Independent.ie