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**Hugh** · 16-06-2019, 23:02

Quote:

Originally Posted by Chris

Damien’s post, quoting from The New European, currently advertising in its strapline a free Bollocks to Brexit mug when you subscribe for just £1 a week. Pardon me if I’m suspicious about the impartiality of that analysis.

Here’s the original source - Annelli Howard, a specialist in EU and competition law at Monckton Chambers and a member of the bar’s Brexit working group.

https://www.theguardian.com/politics...it-say-experts

Quote:

There are two apparently insurmountable hurdles to the UK trading on current WTO tariffs in the event of Britain crashing out in March, said Howard.

Firstly, the UK must produce its own schedule covering both services and each of the 5,000-plus product lines covered in the WTO agreement and get it agreed by all the 163 WTO states in the 32 remaining parliamentary sitting days until 29 March 2019. A number of states have already raised objections to the UK’s draft schedule: 20 over goods and three over services.

To make it more complicated, there are no “default terms” Britain can crash out on, Howard said, while at the same time, the UK has been blocked by WTO members from simply relying on the EU’s “schedule” – its existing tariffs and tariff-free trade quotas.

The second hurdle is the sheer volume of domestic legislation that would need to be passed before being able to trade under WTO rules: there are nine statutes and 600 statutory instruments that would need to be adopted.

The government cannot simply cut and paste the 120,000 EU statutes into UK law and then make changes to them gradually, Howard said. “The UK will need to set up new enforcement bodies and transfer new powers to regulators to create our own domestic regimes,” she said.