The European Chemicals Agency - the ECHA (HERE) regulates the production and use of chemicals in the EU and the EEA. They have established their position on Brexit. This is it:
"EU Member States participate in our Scientific Committees, the Forum for Exchange of Information on Enforcement as well as our networks and thereby exercise important functions of mutual benefit to the Agency and to their own application of the EU chemicals legislation. With the UK withdrawal, British participation will come to an end".
After Brexit, in the absence of an agreement on chemicals, we will lose whatever influence we had about their regulation in the EU, our biggest overseas market. The ECHA also say:
We also manage two specialised networks of representatives from each EU and EEA member state: the Security Officers’ Network (SON) responsible for supervising the secure links of member states to our databases and the network of correspondents from national BPR, CLP and REACH helpdesks (HelpNet).
Upon losing its status of EU Member State with the date of its withdrawal, the United Kingdom will cease to be part of these networks. On substance, participation in these networks would anyhow become immaterial as the United Kingdom will no longer have access to our databases or participate in our regulatory, enforcement coordination or other processes. The United Kingdom will also no longer have a legal obligation to maintain a national help desk to provide UK-based companies with advice and assistance in fulfilling their obligations under the EU chemicals legislation.
This was covered yesterday in the EU Referendum blog (HERE).
I don't know if or how the ECHA ruling might impact Sarah McCartney who is a self taught perfumer and owner of a SME (HERE). She ships her products around the world. Recently she tweeted (HERE) about the difference between shipping to France and India. To France it's two labels and a quarterly VAT return. But she has been trying to ship two boxes of perfumes to India since January - involving 42 forms (since increased to 62) and she still has only recently managed to ship the stuff - via France!
This is a problem that many small businesses are going to face after Brexit. The EU is often portrayed as an organisation for big business because of its penchant for rules and regulations. Brexiteers seem to think this works against the interests of SMEs. But this obviously doesn't apply to Sarah McCartney. In facts it's the opposite, she has a market of 500 million people accessible to her with minimal paperwork.
The response to her tweets from leavers is remarkable. One says:
"So you could put up with a little more paperwork on your sales to France, if it resulted in a massive reduction in the paperwork on your sales to India. This is what Leavers are working towards, just don't expect to see much for another 15 months".
She responds:
"Mr Davis [David] thinks it's going to be easy to replace Europe with other export markets; it's not. Wouldn't it be great if it were simple to export to India as well as France, not instead of."
And he replies:
"Agreed - is it more likely that we can sort out such agreements bilaterally, just taking account of the self interests of two countries, or when the negotiators representing us have to take account of the self interest of 28 countries"
This is the simplistic view of leavers who have been seduced by the Brexiteer claims about increasing trade, especially with countries like India. India does not see its self interests is served by importing anything as anyone who has tried to trade with India will confirm. This is why trade deals take such a long time.
The EU is our home market. Shrinking it massively as a way of boosting exports is so ridiculous it doesn't bear scrutiny but this is what the Brexiteers have persuaded leave voters is in their own interests. The folly of it is slowly becoming clear.
