Gully Foyle's Brexit Benefits List

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Gully Foyle's Brexit Benefits List The new Facebook home of the Gully Foyle Brexit Benefits list - as originally made on Twitter/X

| BENEFIT 5 |EU membership requires the delegation of a number of sovereign powers, one of which is the ability to negot...
18/06/2024

| BENEFIT 5 |

EU membership requires the delegation of a number of sovereign powers, one of which is the ability to negotiate international trade agreements. Being in a Customs Union requires centralised control of trade policy, as all members must control border crossings of goods in the exact same way, charging the same tariffs for the Customs Union to work.

The UK’s membership of the EU Customs Union (EUCU) was as a member of the EU, and so when the UK left the EU, it also left the EUCU as a necessary consequence.

At the point of leaving the EU in 2020, there were 45 FTAs/RTAs recognised by the WTO as having been notified to them as being agreed and in place. Of those 45, 43 were seen to still be active / not suspended by one of the parties to the agreement.

The UK instigated a process of trade continuity, which involved discussions with the signatories of all EU trade agreements, to attempt to secure continuity of those same trade agreements on the same terms, but with just the UK.

It is worth noting that, as the UK was still considered an EU member until the point at which its membership came to an end, it was not legally possible for the UK to conduct any trade negotiations or agree any terms different to those agreed centrally by the EU. This meant that it was not possible for the UK to negotiate any different terms with those countries, until after the departure was complete.

At the time of writing this, the only EU FTAs that had not been either replicated or replaced by other means were those with Bosnia, Montenegro and Algeria – this means that the UK was able to take advantage of the same trade deals on the same terms, but without the membership cost for being within the EU.

Link 1: https://rtais.wto.org/UI/PublicMaintainRTAHome.aspx
Link 2: https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/the-uks-trade-agreements

| BENEFIT 4 |In July of 2019, Swiss regulators introduced a ban on EU exchanges being able to trade in Swiss equities, f...
18/06/2024

| BENEFIT 4 |

In July of 2019, Swiss regulators introduced a ban on EU exchanges being able to trade in Swiss equities, following a collapse in negotiations with the EU and the resultant loss of equivalence status for the Swiss stock market – after the European Commission allowed the time-limited status to lapse.

Fast-forward two years to February of 2021, and the UK now being outside of the EU regained the ability to trade in Swiss stocks on the London markets.

Before the ban was put in place in 2019, London platforms handled around 1.2 billion euros daily in Swiss share which with necessary fees would net around £8 million per day to HMRC. Over the course of the year that equates to around £2 billion that EU membership took away from the UK coffers in 2019 – and Brexit was able to return to them.

Link 1: https://www.reuters.com/world/uk/switzerland-lifts-ban-london-will-resume-trading-swiss-stocks-2021-02-03/

| BENEFIT 3 |In January 2021, the EU introduced a new source of funds for financing the ever-growing EU budget, in the f...
18/06/2024

| BENEFIT 3 |

In January 2021, the EU introduced a new source of funds for financing the ever-growing EU budget, in the form of an annual fee to be paid by all member states. This fee was to be paid for the amount of plastic packaging estimated to have been created / manufactured within the member state but not recycled, at a rate of €0.80 for every kilogram of waste.

In 2021, the UK is estimated to have produced around 2.5 Million tonnes of plastic packaging - with 1.4 Million tonnes believed to have not been recycled. So were the UK to still be a member of the EU, this would have meant that for 2021 the UK would have had to contribute an additional €1.12 Billion to the EU budget, on top of its core contributions.

Though the data for subsequent year has not yet become available, it is fair to assume a similar level of contribution per year - which would mean the UK has saved itself around €4 Billion since it left the EU, with the amount increasing for each year we are out.

Link 1: https://commission.europa.eu/strategy-and-policy/eu-budget/long-term-eu-budget/2021-2027/revenue/own-resources/plastics-own-resource_en
Link 2: https://www.consilium.europa.eu/en/policies/financing-the-eu-budget/
Link 3: https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/uk-waste-data/uk-statistics-on-waste

| BENEFIT 2 |The EU has multiple methods by which it raises funds to pay for itself and the salaries of the 60,000 peopl...
18/06/2024

| BENEFIT 2 |

The EU has multiple methods by which it raises funds to pay for itself and the salaries of the 60,000 people that the EU institutions employ. One of those methods is through the revenue taken at its external border through import tariffs, of which the EU takes a majority share.

At the time of the vote to leave the EU, 80% of import tariffs collected at the UK border were paid directly to the EU. The EU has since reduced this to 75% in its most recent budgetary period.

Now outside the EU, the UK retains 100% of border tariffs collected, which in 2022 was around £3 Billion (around 0.1% of GDP in 2022). This means that, in 2022, the UK retained an extra £2.25 Billion to spend on the priorities of the UK taxpayer, that it would have otherwise had to pay to the EU for it to decide what to spend it on.

Link 1: https://commission.europa.eu/strategy-and-policy/eu-budget/long-term-eu-budget/2021-2027/revenue/own-resources/customs-duties_en
Link 2: https://www.statista.com/statistics/284363/customs-duty-united-kingdom-hmrc-tax-receipts/

| BENEFIT 1 |As one of the larger economies of the EU (second largest by GDP, third largest by population in 2016), the ...
18/06/2024

| BENEFIT 1 |

As one of the larger economies of the EU (second largest by GDP, third largest by population in 2016), the UK was also one of the largest net contributors to the core EU budget - which means that it would contribute more to the EU budget each year than it would receive back in expenditure by the EU within the UK.

The UK was responsible for roughly 12.5% of the annual core budget of the EU, which in 2024 was €189 Billion - which would in turn have resulted in a gross contribution from the UK of around €24 Billion, were it still to be a member. This figure would have been higher though, had the UK still been a member, as there would have been additional spend within the UK as well.

Working from previous ratios of gross and net contributions, and assuming an annual gross contribution of €24 Billion (which would have been higher), the UK would have had a net contribution each year in this budgetary period of at least €14-16 Billion.

From outside of the EU, the UK government not only gets to decide, in line with the wishes of the UK electorate, where €8 Billion of UK contributions gets to be spent - but it also has an additional €14-16 Billion to allocate to the priorities of the electorate as well.

Link 1: https://www.consilium.europa.eu/en/policies/eu-annual-budget/2024-budget/
Link 2: https://blog.ons.gov.uk/2019/09/18/how-eu-contributions-are-calculated/

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