With 24 days to go before we're blasted out of the EU, the House of Commons library yesterday released a briefing note (HERE) about the international agreements that the EU has with third countries. You are going to find this absolutely amazing but the paper begins by asking how many of these agreements are pertinent to the UK. Stunningly, 32 months after the referendum our inept government still doesn't know! The paper uses a figure of 759 which the FT 'suggested' in May 2017.
The British government has not apparently actually counted how many of these agreements are important to us and instead rely on a newspaper report from nearly two years ago. The Summary on page 4 begins with a question:
How many international agreements does the EU have?
Which it answers thus:
"The UK is currently party to numerous international agreements with third countries as a member of the EU. The EU’s Europa online Treaties database lists 1,261 international agreements that the EU is party to. How many of these are pertinent to the UK remains unclear".
What! After two and a half years the number of these EU agreements that relate to the UK 'remains unclear'!! It goes on:
A report in the Financial Times in May 2017 suggested that there were 759 separate EU international agreements with potential relevance to Britain. This included 295 agreements related to trade, as well as agreements related to regulatory co-operation, fisheries, agriculture, nuclear co-operation and transport co-operation (including aviation). The agreements cover 168 countries, with multiple accords with certain countries.
But our intrepid International Trade Secretary Liam Fox doesn't agree because he:
"...has indicated that such high figures are misleading, and that not all of the treaties would require action to maintain continuity following Brexit. Some of these treaties have been superseded, are redundant or no longer relevant to the UK, and there are also multiple agreements that could be understood as one agreement. In January 2019, Brexit Secretary Stephen Barclay said that some of these agreements are not relevant to the UK and in some cases the UK has signed agreements in its own right and therefore does not need new agreements.
"He also said that in the event of the UK leaving the EU with no deal, the Government’s assessment was that about 1,000 EU treaties were relevant, but this slipped down to under 400 with a direct impact, and a much lower number “in the tens” of more material issue from exit day".
Then we get into the meat of the briefing paper (page 8) with a bit more detail:
Of these agreements[the 1,261], a total of 1,092 agreements (851 bilateral and 241 multilateral) had entered into force as of 17 July 2018. 169 agreements had yet to enter into force.
Or is it?
"It remains unclear how many of these agreements are of current relevance to the UK, and would therefore require replacement with a new agreement in order to ensure continuity in the UK’s post-Brexit relationships with third countries".
The whole briefing paper is a patchwork of explanations about various agreements and mini-deals already signed (a total of 6 - page 39) plus other agreements that the DIT is working on, together with 'texts' they have the 'intention' to 'finalise', multi-lateral agreements where the government is 'taking action', agreements under EU’s area of freedom, security and justice, and agreements where Foreign and Commonwealth Office is 'taking lead'.
Suffice it to say that Fox's Department of International Trade looks as shambolic as everything else.
Is it any wonder that nobody believes we will be leaving the EU at the end of this month? A senior minister who wishes to remain anonymous but is involved in Brexit planning has told Sky News a delay of a couple of months is 'inevtaible' (HERE). What a surprise.
