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By: Carter Hull
In June of 2016, referendum voters in the United Kingdom voted to “Brexit,” or in other words, remove themselves from the European Union. This decision came after more than three years of uncertainty and fractured politics, including three different Prime Ministers and on January 31, 2020, the U.K. officially exited the EU. Currently, the UK and EU are in what is called the “transition period” where both sides must come to an agreement on what their future relationship will look like. If a bilateral agreement is not reached by December 31, 2020 deadline then the UK faces the prospect of having to open their economy to trade with no deal in place. In turn, tariffs (taxes) on UK goods traveling to the EU would occur and cause numerous other trade barriers.
However, at a time that should have included frequent interaction and negotiations between the UK and EU, both groups were isolated, locked down, and focused on fighting the COVID-19 pandemic within their own borders. As a result, Brexit negotiations stalled due to COVID-19 lockdowns, leading both sides to announce on June 3, 2020, that they made “little headway in their efforts to strike a post-Brexit trade deal.”
In March of this year, the UK and other EU countries began to close their borders to contain and slow the spread of COVID-19. While today both sides have slowly begun the reopening process as new confirmed cases continue to decline, the past few months have preoccupied both the UK and EU, leaving little time for Brexit negotiations to continue. Considering that British PM Boris Johnson was briefly hospitalized after contracting the virus and that Her Majesty The Queen has continued to stay in isolation at Windsor Castle, Her Majesty's Government is more distanced and inefficient than ever before.
Across the English Channel in the European Union, governments have been in a similar scramble to contain COVID-19 after many EU members, most notably Italy, became new epicenters of the pandemic. Thus it is understandable why negotiations have been on the back burner for the past few months. But because the COVID-19 pandemic is considered to be far from over many people are wondering— will the UK crash out of the EU without a deal?
Seemingly it has become more likely that the UK will leave the EU for good on December 31st with or without a deal put in place. Considering the last chance to request a deadline passed at the end of June 2020, and Boris Johnson’s government stated that it would rather walk away without a deal than prolonging the talks, it is unlikely things will change.
So while a no-deal Brexit once seemed completely out of the question, the COVID-19 pandemic’s scramble of the government’s economic and political calculations has made a no-deal outcome entirely plausible. If this were to happen, Britain would default to trading with the European Union on World Trade Organization terms in 2021, including tariffs on goods traveling from the UK into the EU, which analysts warn would shock the British economy.
The next critical discussion — for which no date has been set yet — will be between Mr. Johnson and Ursula von der Leyen, the President of the European Commission, the European Union’s executive body. Some analysts argue that the pandemic will drive Britain and other countries to bring manufacturing home to reduce their dependence on global supply chains. That, in turn, will lessen the need for an agreement with Brussels.
So while the Coronavirus caused Brexit negotiations to stall initially, it seems that the Coronavirus's latest fatality could very well be the UK-EU trade deal.
Discussion Questions:
Could a no-deal Brexit be the best option for a post-pandemic Britain?
Does the UK need free trade with the EU to survive?
Will Brexit be the downfall of yet another Prime Minister?
How has the coronavirus changed the UK’s reliance on the EU?
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