The Brexit regulation debate pits short-term disruption against future prosperity

29 Jan 2018 11:41 AM

Open Europe's Henry Newman argues if the UK doesn’t have the ability to decide its own rules in key areas, the Government will have sacrificed future prosperity to minimise short-term disruption.

The key question remains whether we will have the ability to choose to have different regulations from the EU, and how that regulatory divergence will be managed.

Given that the Government announced that we will be leaving the Single Market, the choices are presented as either a so-called ‘EEA minus’ option or a ‘Canada plus’ deal. The former would put Britain just outside of the European Economic Area (of which Norway, for example, is part) but as close as possible to the Single Market. ‘Canada plus’ – or ‘Canada plus plus plus’ as Brexit Secretary David Davis suggested – would mean a deeper version of the Canada-EU CETA trade deal.

For full article see Open Europe’s website