The UK’s quest for trade deals

What does the UK want?

In London on 19 May, the UK government meets with representatives of the European Union (EU) to make progress on a reset of the relationship post-Brexit. The Labour manifesto set out some improvements the Starmer government seeks to achieve.

It wants a change in arrangements in approving food imports and exports that currently require veterinary certificates. It will argue for easier access to EU venues for UK touring musicians. It wants more recognition of UK professional qualifications on the continent. It would also like a military and security pact.

More importantly, as Labour worries about losing votes to pro-Brexit Reform, the manifesto ruled out any return to membership of the single market and the customs union. It vetoed any idea of resuming freedom of movement between the EU and UK. The party did not exclude more UK alignment with EU rules, but nor did it propose it. The principle of accepting EU rules with European Court enforcement implies moving close to membership of the single market.

What does the EU want?

The EU is broadly happy with the complex Trade and Co-operation Agreement (TCA) introduced after Brexit, as modified by the Windsor Protocol for Northern Ireland. It would like to secure continuing access to UK fishing grounds. Under transition arrangements that expire next year, the EU takes substantial amounts of the available quotas.

The EU delegation proposes a youth-mobility scheme for 18-to-30-year-olds to make it easier for people from the continent to come to the UK. It wants the UK to align more fully with EU rules and would want the UK to accept any new rules in the agreed areas that the EU might impose.

The EU has appointed Vice-President Maroš Sefcovic, a Slovak diplomat, as its lead negotiator. It has not yet tasked him with a formal negotiating remit, which under their procedures the EU will need to do before any binding agreement can be approved with the UK.

In the long Brexit discussions, the EU negotiator worked from a remit that had been laid down by the European Commission (EC) and approved by the member states. The member states were discouraged from negotiating bilaterally or to seek to amend the remit. It meant the bloc negotiated strongly. If the negotiations result in the need for changes to the TCA, the member states, the European Union and the UK parliament need to follow ratification processes.

A security agreement

It is probable that the two sides can agree a security partnership on 19 May. This is likely to be a non-legally-binding agreement, which will not therefore pose constitutional issues in the UK. It will need to be Nato friendly. The difficult question relates to the desire by the British delegation that UK defence companies can get the right to bid for defence work arising from the additional borrowed funds the EU is going to commit to re-armament in the EU.

There is some suggestion of the UK making a financial contribution to a common fund. It is difficult to see how this would be better than the UK increasing its defence budget for direct purchase of its own weapons.

The security partnership will be a statement of intent and may set out an informal architecture for consultations and joint working. In practice, the UK works closely with leading EU allies through the Nato decision-making process with Nato HQ support.

A difficult and fishy issue

There was briefing that the French wished to make a security agreement dependent on resolving the issue of EU access to UK waters after transition in 2026, but this seems to have been played down by others in the EU. Fish will need to be resolved as part of a wider improved trade agreement.

There was an inability to resolve fishing rights when completing the very long and complex TCA that the two sides finally signed to complete Brexit. Annex 35 set out the pattern of EU and UK quotas for fish in UK waters up to 2026, leaving open a longer-term settlement for later discussion.

The EU document states: “More than 100 fish stocks have been co-managed by the EU together with the UK” during UK membership of the bloc. “Since January 2021 the rights to catch fish for shared stocks are established through annual bilateral consultations”.

In practice, the shares were determined in the TCA up to 2026. The UK industry is not happy with the share of quotas going to EU vessels, pointing to the higher figures for some important species. The EU has 90% of mackerel in the western area, 90% of cod in the eastern English Channel, 78% of prawns and 90% of seabream. Its high 97% of sand eels anywhere in UK waters is currently the centre of a dispute under arbitration, as the UK banned sand eel fishing on grounds that it was depleting stocks of small fish needed to sustain larger fish and to protect the marine environment.

Over the years in the Common Fishing Policy there was large decline in the UK fishing fleet and in the associated fish processing and food manufacturing on the back of it. The EU would say some UK fishing businesses sold out to continental interests with their quota. The UK industry would say they were more restricted than others by a quota system designed to limit the offtake of fish given the number of nations and vessels wishing to exploit the fishing ground. There are issues about mutual access to each other’s waters in an industry where the fish swim across the borders nations have created.

The trade in food

The UK became very dependent on EU food supplies during its time as a member. In 2024, the UK ran a large trade deficit in food with the EU, importing £47.7bn worth of goods and exporting just £15.1bn back. The UK ran a surplus with North America and a deficit with the rest of the world on small volumes. The UK’s largest food and drink export is whisky, accounting for about a fifth of the total. The largest imports are better balanced, led by fruit, wine and vegetables.

Food and drink trade

The government thinks the UK could sell more animal-based products to the EU if the procedures for certifying the product as safe were simplified. The current system makes extensive use of vets to certify products such as meat and dairy on a consignment basis, instead of relying on general animal health controls and the normal vet inspections carried out by farmers looking after animals.

The modest increase in exports they think they might gain needs to take into account the much bigger sales base the EU currently enjoys in these products and the scope for more EU exports. Meanwhile, the EU wants to use this request as an opportunity to intensify EU regulations and to require the UK to implement all relevant EU rules, updating them when the EU changes. The UK has not made much change to the inherited EU rules but is not currently automatically adopting new and amended EU rules.

Musicians, students and youth opportunities

The UK currently admits all those EU students who apply successfully to approved UK higher education institutions on a student visa. A foreign student can work 20 hours a week whilst on a full-time degree course and can work fulltime in the vacations. A student visa does not normally entitle people to a work visa after their course. The EU would like to get closer to the more liberal position when the UK was in the EU where students could come without visas and could get stay and get jobs after their courses.

After Brexit the UK left the EU Erasmus scheme. This scheme provided money to support successful applicants to study in other EU countries. The UK paid money in. More of the money was spent on providing courses for continentals coming to the UK than helping UK students, as there was less demand by UK students to study on the continent.

After Brexit, the UK set up the Turing Scheme, which allocates all the money to UK students to pay to go a university in many different countries around the world, including the EU. This is more popular with students who tend to want to go to study in the US or some other English-speaking country. It is unpopular with UK universities which benefitted from the Erasmus scheme with more European students.

The UK wants easier clearance of travelling musicians going to EU countries to continue long traditions of cultural exchanges and common performances of Western music. The EU wants a Youth Mobility Scheme and links this to the request from musicians. The Home Office, according to the press, has been pushing back on an open-ended scheme that allows more young people to come to the UK to study and work as it will increase the already high numbers of legal migrants posing more issues over housing and other support. It has been exploring caps on numbers, ‘one-in-one-out’ schemes and other proposals.

A US or EU deal?

The government wants to try to get an improved deal with the EU and a trade deal with the US too. Doing both around the same time is difficult, as there will be some read across. The US is angry with the EU over what it sees as barriers to US exports and some high tariffs. The EU’s wish to keep the UK on EU product regulations and food controls makes negotiating on these issues more difficult with the US. The barriers to trade with the US are more considerable than with the EU, as the TCA with means all UK/EU trade is tariff free.

Conclusion

The likely outcome is a defence and security agreement on 19 May, with more work to be done to fill out its details. The two sides will probably set out general aims over an enhanced partnership and a collaboration on European re-armament. It will keep the issue of increased defence activity and spending in the news.

Any trade enhancement agreement is likely to take longer. The talks may provide more precision over the timetable and the remit of talks. The putative US deal remains in President Trump’s hands, as he is clearly deciding the policy and its changes and has not set out either a timetable or remit for the trade talks that the public can see. The issues seem to revolve around a possible mutual reduction of tariffs on cars, UK changes to the digital services tax (DST) and possible advances on services. The UK has ruled out changing food regula