The European Union could consider the UK joining a continent-wide trade agreement, as Sir Keir Starmer’s Government seeks a reset with the bloc, an EU trade chief has indicated.
Maros Sefcovic, who led post-Brexit negotiations for the EU, told the BBC the UK joining the Pan-Euro-Mediterranean Convention (PEM) is “something we could consider”.
The PEM allows for tariff-free trade of goods across Europe, as well as some North African and Levantine nations.
Some business groups have backed the UK joining PEM as it would help to maintain complex supply chains, but the previous Conservative Government chose not to pursue it as part of a post-Brexit trade agreement.
Speaking to the BBC at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Mr Sefcovic said the idea had not yet been “precisely formulated” and that the “ball is in the UK’s court”.
The UK Government has begun consulting with businesses on the benefits of the PEM plan and how it could help cut red tape and improve trade, the BBC said.
Mr Sefcovic also told the broadcaster he would like to see the possibility of a full-scale veterinary agreement between the EU and UK reviewed.
If UK food and farm products were given single market treatment, he said it would mean “we would have to have the same rules and we have to upgrade them at the same time, we call it dynamic alignment”.
The lack of a veterinary agreement after Brexit has been a major sticking point for UK food businesses hoping to export to Britain’s nearest neighbours.
Dame Emily Thornberry, chairwoman of the Commons Foreign Affairs Committee, told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme that the UK’s post-Brexit trade settlement with the trade bloc had “all kinds of holes” in it.
The Labour MP added: “Within that agreement there is a mechanism for improving it, and we need to seize that opportunity, because we need to make sure that within the constraints of the vote to leave the European Union, we nevertheless do everything that we can to get rid of barriers to trade with our nearest neighbours and the people who we trade with the most.”
The “uneven and difficult” situation with veterinary checks needed to be resolved, she added.
