UK-EU Trade and Cooperation Agreement: barriers to trade in goods and opportunities to improve the UK-EU trade relationship

Earlier this year we contributed evidence to the Scottish Parliament’s review into the UK-EU Trade and Cooperation Agreement and barriers to trade in goods and opportunities to improve the UK- EU trading relationship.

The report sets out the Committee’s recommendations on where such improvements can be made to the trading relationship, with a view to informing the forthcoming TCA review as well as improved relations between the UK, including Scotland, and the EU.

The overview of the report can be found here.

The report itself can be found here.

We set out our view that the European Commission “does not want to change the TCA but that it is willing, at any point, to negotiate additional agreements. Some of those might involve a more complicated process than the amendments with the Partnership Council.” It added that “clearly, a procedure for talking about such matters is set out in the TCA.”

The FSB recognised that there is “no single silver bullet to reduce friction” in trade with the EU, but suggested that there are a “number of things that could ease some of the burdens, reduce some of the costs and just make trade that little bit more appealing and less burdensome for small businesses.”