Responding to ’ speech on standards and
competitiveness post-Brexit, Allie Renison, Head of Europe and
Trade Policy at the IoD, said:
“Business leaders welcome the speech made by the Secretary of
State for Exiting the EU, which acknowledges that equivalent
standards and regulations should not impede market access, but
firms will require more clarity on how this would work in
practice.
“The IoD is particularly pleased that Davis acknowledges the
importance of keeping a level playing field on state aid and
competition policy. Minimising trade barriers can and should go
hand in hand with a future deal with the EU. However, as we
intimated in our latest report, Customising Brexit: A
hybrid option for a UK-EU trade framework, the
introduction of rules of origin for manufacturing could be a
significant barrier in the absence of any partial customs union
arrangement with the EU.
p>“We would encourage the Government to be cautious about
using previous trade deals as precedents for mutual recognition,
seeing as it is broadly limited to conformity assessment,
inspections and professional qualifications in other free-trade
agreements to date. Brexit could mean asking for an unprecedented
degree of mutual recognition of rules and, while we support this as
an aim for certain sectors, we have always stressed the need for
greater clarity on future regulatory cooperation and how it would
work in practice.”