LONDON – It was something politicians debated for a while, diplomats spent years negotiating and officials spent a fortune preparing.
But on Thursday, Britain acknowledged the embarrassment that it was not quite ready for Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s biggest political project, Brexit.
Nearly five years after Britain voted to leave the European Union, the government has said it would be blown away by some goods arriving from the mainland to British ports until January 2022 – a tacit acknowledgment that it does not have the capacity to to carry out the border surveys required by Brexit.
The latest postponement of the Brexit process has been a relief for UK businesses as it weakens the risk of supermarkets’ fresh produce, or misses out car factories in need of spare parts.
But for the country that started the rift with the bloc of 27 countries, the delay indicates that the government has underestimated or underestimated the myriad complications of Brexit.
“This is probably the right thing to do, but it indicates political failures because it was very predictable,” said Sam Lowe, senior research fellow at the Center for European Reform, a research institute in London. He was referring to the government’s announcement Thursday. “The infrastructure is clearly not available to allow full inspections in July.”
While Britain was a member of the European Union, British and continental enterprises were able to trade freely with minimal paperwork. But it all ended when Britain left the bloc’s customs union and internal market on 1 January, and goods moving between the two sides now require customs declarations and, in the case of food products, health certification.
The British preferred to phase in their checks gradually, but to have them in place in July. Now the deadline has been pushed back a further six months to January 2022.
In contrast, on 1 January this year, Ireland and mainland European countries imposed their customs controls on goods coming from Britain, which hit some British exporters hard.
“There is already a lot of disruption with only 50 percent of the controls,” he said. Lowe, ‘I wonder if the government looked at this and said,’ We can do this without having a problem like this now. ‘”
Germany’s imports from Britain fell by more than 56 per cent in January compared to the same month in 2020, although some of this can be explained by the stock before the Brexit trade changes and by the impact of the pandemic.
According to a survey by Make UK, an organization representing manufacturers, almost three-quarters of UK companies have experienced delays in moving goods inside and outside the European Union over the past three months. Half said administrative and other costs associated with shipping had risen.
With increasing tensions over trade, vaccine stocks and other problems, relations between London and Brussels have weakened to a state of semi-permanent friction.
In a statement, the British government said it intended to change the ports in response to complaints from businesses that faced serious challenges during the pandemic.
“As a sovereign trading nation outside the EU, we have the freedom to make decisions in our national interest – and in the interest of our businesses,” said David Frost, who negotiated the Brexit trade agreement with the European Union for Britain and now a cabinet minister responsible for its implementation.
“Six months later than planned, we will introduce border control in detail to give traders time to focus on getting back on their feet as the economy opens up after a difficult year,” he said in a statement.
The decision nevertheless sparked some ridicule from those who spurred the 2016 slogan of the campaign to urge voters to support Brexit and ‘take back control’.
The new ethos, according to critics, is to do so by not exercising control at all.
British businesses welcomed the decision.
Ian Wright, CEO of the Food and Beverage Federation, a trade organization, said his sector without delay “has disruption, extra costs and potential shortages of some goods, all of which could possibly be avoided”.
The application of the originally planned checks would also have had an impact on the continental truck drivers ‘willingness to come to Britain, which was’ already fragile ‘,’ he said.
Many trucks delivering goods from mainland Europe to Britain return empty-handed to avoid time-consuming checks when arriving in countries such as France, Belgium or the Netherlands.
Thursday’s decision followed the announcement of a separate and much more politically sensitive choice to delay the greater control of goods from Britain to Northern Ireland.
Because trade with Northern Ireland is covered by a separate agreement with the European Union, Britain’s unilateral decision to delay control of certain goods en route there has blocked the bloc, saying it violates international law.
The bloc’s executive body, the European Commission, is expected to launch legal action against Britain in the coming days.
Tensions between Britain and the European Union have upset businesses. Adam Marshall, director general of the British Chambers of Commerce, described Thursday’s decision as a welcome but temporary solution.
“What businesses want to see is an end to the damaging political rhetoric on both sides, and a focus on improving border flow in the long run,” he said.
Mr. Wright confirms the sentiment, saying Thursday’s announcement not only reflects a lack of infrastructure in British ports, but also concerns that many continental businesses were ill-prepared for the new paperwork.
But Mr. Lowe, the analyst, said that the British preparations for Brexit were hampered by political considerations and by the government’s desire to present the policy in a positive light. This meant that until late in the process, companies received little information about the amount of red tape.
“To prepare properly was to acknowledge that Brexit was a bad idea from an economic perspective and to acknowledge that it meant businesses would run into problems,” he said.