As explained, this means that no customs duties or quotas will be applied to trade in goods between the UK and the European Union if the goods meet the relevant certification requirements.

An agreement on the terms of the future relationship between the UK and the European Union in bilateral trade in goods will provide 100% tariff liberalization, of which the British government published substantive details on Friday.

The 1,246-page document, which includes 800 pages of appendices and footnotes, was agreed upon by negotiators between the British government and the European Commission on Thursday night after months of negotiations.

The 34-page excerpt released by Downing Street late Friday says it is unprecedented for the trade deal included in the deal to include 100 percent tariff liberalization.

As explained, this means that no customs duties or quotas will be applied to trade in goods between the UK and the European Union if the goods meet the relevant certification requirements.

According to an excerpt published by the British government, this is the first time that the EU has agreed on a trade regime without tariffs and quotas with an external trading partner.

Before reaching a deal, the British government regularly mentioned, among the possible outcomes of the negotiations, that bilateral trade would resume on an “Australian-style” basis after the end of the current transition period.

This, in fact, would have meant the lack of a global agreement, in which case trade between the UK and the EU would have continued from January under the general rules of the World Trade Organization (WTO). This would have led to the appearance of tariffs in bilateral merchandise trade.

The British business sector has been constantly alerting the government to the risks of this.

The Confederation of British Automobile Manufacturers and Dealers (SMMT) said in its annual assessment of the situation presented shortly before the deal was reached: it estimates that WTO rules in the absence of a free trade agreement would make the auto industries of the United Kingdom and the EU lost 110 billion euros by 2025.

According to the summary presented on Friday, the agreement also covers the service sectors. The document states that additional market access will be provided to a wide range of service sectors, including financial, legal and commercial services.

However, the excerpt does not specifically mention the conditions under which financial services companies in the London financial sector, City, can continue to be present on the EU financial services market.

Since the start of the Brexit process, City’s financial services companies, especially investment banks, have feared losing their passport rights, that is, their service licenses for the euro zone markets, in the absence of a specific agreement on financial services.

A leading London financial analyst, the Center for London, estimates that if London’s financial center loses access to the European Union’s single internal market, it could result in the loss of 70,000 financial services jobs in the City, which currently employs more than 300,000 people.

According to the analyst firm, this would be a disaster, as the value of exports of financial services and other related services within London’s total independent exports reaches £ 100 billion a year. This is half of London’s total exports as an independent economic entity.



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