8

From UNCTAD, as of 3 Sep 2019:

Among the countries which currently grant preferences to the EU but for which the UK has not yet reached an agreement to grant continued preferential market access, Turkey, South Africa, Canada, Mexico, Japan, Egypt and Morocco are the markets where the UK is expected to have larger export losses. In particular, the UK is expected to lose about USD$500 million of exports in the Turkey market, about 5 percent of its exports to Turkey. In South Africa, the UK is expected to lose about USD$240 million, equivalent to about 9 percent of its exports to South Africa.

Even more recently, on Sep 11 the UK announced an "agreement in principle" with South Africa and a few other smaller [economically at least] African countries (but that doesn't include Egypt or Morocco.)

But what do we know of the UK-Turkey negotiations? (According to UNCTAD, Turkey was the largest non-EU trading partner that has an arrangement with the EU, but insofar not with the UK in the post-Brexit horizon.) Are there any sticking points in these UK-Turkey negotiations that have been made public?

2
  • 2
    Might be related to the fact that, legally, the UK isn't even supposed to be having such talks before leaving the EU, and the fact that Turkey (in contrast with South Africa and the small African countries) has a customs arrangement with the EU. Sep 16, 2019 at 1:43
  • According to guido fawkes order-order.com/2019/09/11/… The UK has made some kind of trade arrangement with South Africa
    – Vorsprung
    Sep 17, 2019 at 7:42

1 Answer 1

14

Denis' comment has a kernel of truth. It's not however that the UK is not allowed to negotiate--after all the UK did conclude some

13 "continuity" deals covering 38 countries or territories.

The issue with Turkey seems to be that since Turkey is in a customs Union with the EU, Turkey doesn't know under what terms (most of) UK's exports will go into Turkey, as these terms depend on the not yet finalised deal between the EU and the UK. According to some 2018 comments of UK's ambassador to Turkey :

“Because Turkey has a Customs Union [agreement] with the EU for goods, Turkey will be obliged to offer the U.K. access to the Turkish market for goods on the same basis as the future free trade agreement that the U.K. negotiates with the EU. But that does not provide for reciprocal access to the British market for Turkish goods. So we need to negotiate in parallel a free trade agreement with Turkey to ensure that Turkey’s access to the U.K. market remains as it is now, or indeed to possibly even increase access to each other’s markets.”

You must log in to answer this question.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged .