The UK is the EU27’s second-largest goods export market

We are 70% bigger than China

© Brexit Facts4EU.Org. See below for clickable full-size chart

What do you do if your 2nd largest customer walks? If you’re the EU... nothing

Yesterday the EU Parliament published one of its occasional reports on international trade deals. There was not one word on a trade deal with the UK, or the impact of the UK leaving.

Instead they say “The EU currently has about 100 trade agreements in place or in the process of being updated or negotiated.” The reality is that there are only 38 trade deals in place, and many of these are not even free trade deals in the normally-accepted sense. (We have published detailed reports on this subject.)

The EU Parliament was also keen to stress in the opening paragraphs that the EU is focused on getting“our partners to recognise EU quality and safety standards, and to respect products with a protected designation of origin, such as champagne or Roquefort cheese.”

Wakey, wakey, time to smell den Kaffee?

Brexit Facts4EU.Org has once again delved into the raw data from the EU’s official statistics agency Eurostat, to show these Europhile federalist ideologues some basic facts they need to confront.

Brexit Facts4EU.Org Summary

The EU27’s exports to non-EU27 countries

  • The UK is the second-biggest market for goods for the EU27
  • EU27 exports to the UK account for 15.5% of the EU27’s total goods sales outside the EU
  • The UK is only just behind the USA which represents 17.1% of the EU27’s exports
  • As a customer the UK is 9 times bigger than Canada, 5 times bigger than Japan (recent trade agreements, still not ratified)
  • The EU27 sold €319 BILLION worth of goods to the UK last year alone

© Brexit Facts4EU.Org - click to enlarge
Source: Official Eurostat trade figures for 2018

Observations

There has been much talk in the media recently regarding the likelihood of the EU agreeing a trade deal with the UK by July next year. This would avoid the need for an extension of the Transition Period to 01 Jan 2023 - which would keep us effectively in the EU if that happened.

For four years we have studied the EU’s lamentable record at doing free trade deals. We have published detailed reports on this many times.

We wish to be very clear

The chances of the EU agreeing a new free trade deal with the UK by July 2020 are:

ZERO

The best that might be hoped for is a fudged agreement to make an agreement – enough to be able to maintain the status quo under the GATT XXIV provisions.

The EU27 would rather sacrifice jobs and prosperity than make a sensible free trade agreement with the UK. For the EU true believers this has always been about ‘Das Projekt’ and their ideology, not about common sense and the interests of ordinary people.

If you found this article interesting, please help us to produce more, and to continue our fight to see Brexit delivered. Yesterday we published the tenth in our series of Brexit factsheets – you can see them all here. We need to do more, and to continue our work behind the scenes. Please donate today, using one of the quick and secure donation methods below this article. Thank you.

[ Sources: EU Parliament | Eurostat official EU statistics ] Politicians and journalists can contact us for details, as ever.

Brexit Facts4EU.Org, 06 Nov 2019

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