Category Archives: Foreign policy

UK insists it will not grant EU ambassador full diplomatic status

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Foreign Office says EU should not be treated as nation state, despite 142 countries granting bloc this status

A near-yearlong row about the UK’s refusal to grant full diplomatic status of the EU mission to the UK has worsened, with the leak of letters revealing the EU foreign affairs chief has serious concerns about the status being given to EU officials in the UK.

The issue is likely to be discussed at a EU foreign affairs council on Monday, the first such meeting of member states’ foreign ministers since the post-Brexit transition ended.

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European leaders hail ‘new dawn’ for ties with US under Biden

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Leaders say Europe again has a friend in the White House but differences with US will not disappear

European leaders have voiced relief at Joe Biden’s inauguration, hailing a “new dawn” for Europe and the US, but warned that the world has changed after four years of Donald Trump’s presidency and that transatlantic ties will be different in future.

“This new dawn in America is the moment we’ve been awaiting for so long,” Ursula von der Leyen, the European commission president, told MEPs. “Once again, after four long years, Europe has a friend in the White House.”

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Theresa May accuses Boris Johnson of ‘abandoning global leadership’

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The former prime minister also criticised outgoing US president Donald Trump

Theresa May has accused Boris Johnson of abandoning Britain’s “position of global moral leadership”, in her most unrestrained attack on her successor yet.

Writing in the Daily Mail ahead of President-elect Joe Biden’s inauguration, the former prime minister had stern words about both the outgoing US president, Donald Trump, and her successor.

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Seafood lorries travel to Westminster for protest against Brexit red tape

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Fishers ‘losing their livelihoods’ as delays hamper exports to the EU and trucks return empty

Fishing lorries from Scotland and Devon have descended on Westminster to stage a protest against the Brexit red tape they say is either delaying or ruining exports of their fresh shellfish to the EU.

Trucks with slogans including “Brexit carnage” and “Incompetent government destroying shellfish industry” parked metres from Downing Street on Monday, but they stopped short of carrying out their threat last week to dump fresh fish close to No 10.

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Shock Brexit charges are hurting us, say small British businesses

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Levies to cover the increase in red tape, VAT and customs declarations are hitting trade to the European Union

Government ministers describe the post-Brexit headaches that British exporters have suffered since 1 January as mere “teething problems”. But Alex Paul, who jointly runs a successful family business that features in the Department for International Trade’s list of national “export champions”, disagrees. And he wants the real story to be told.

Two weeks into the supposed golden era of global Britain, Paul and many other British entrepreneurs, large and small, are running into very serious problems.

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Keir Starmer outlines ‘optimistic’ future for UK with Biden as president

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Labour leader uses first address on foreign policy since taking office to build bridges with US and EU

Sir Keir Starmer has set out his “optimistic” vision for a wide-ranging new relationship with the US under Joe Biden.

Speaking before Biden’s inauguration on 20 January, Starmer said he was “incredibly optimistic about the new relationship we can build” and that Britain must once again be “the bridge between the US and the rest of Europe”.

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EU halts imports of seafood from smaller Scottish companies

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Export firms point to post-Brexit delays around health certificates, IT systems and missing customs papers

Deliveries of Scottish seafood to the EU from smaller companies have been halted until Monday, 18 January, after post-Brexit problems with health checks, IT systems and customs documents caused a huge backlog.

Scottish fishing has been plunged into crisis, as lorry-loads of live seafood and some fish destined for shops and restaurants in France, Spain and other countries have been rejected because they are taking too long to arrive.

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Starmer accepts end of EU free movement in Brexit reversal

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Labour leader rules out extensive renegotiation if party wins next election

Keir Starmer has abandoned the commitment to free movement of people in the European Union he made to Labour members during the party’s leadership contest.

The Labour leader said his party had to be honest with the public, and that if it won the next general election a major renegotiation of the Brexit treaty would not be possible.

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‘I’m stuck here’: lorry drivers in Calais begin to feel effects of Brexit

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Truck drivers tell of long delays for checks at the Eurotunnel as trade barrier goes up between UK and EU

Roger White arrived in France at 2.30pm on Tuesday with a truckload of hard cheese from Somerset.

Before Brexit he would have rolled off the Eurotunnel train and carried on up the A16 to Belgium, unloading his wares a few hours later at his ultimate destination in Utrecht.

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Netherlands and Germany refuse entry to UK nationals for non-essential travel

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Thirteen people barred since Brexit because UK no longer exempt from EU Covid-related travel restrictions

More than a dozen UK nationals have been refused entry to the Netherlands since 1 January because Britain is no longer exempt from Covid-related restrictions on non-essential travel from outside the EU since it left the bloc.

A Dutch border force spokesman confirmed on Monday that up to 13 British citizens had been turned away at Amsterdam’s Schiphol airport since Friday because their trips were not necessary and third-country coronavirus regulations now applied.

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Is the leftwing vision of Brexit Britain just fantasy? | Letters

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Readers respond to an article by Larry Elliott calling for those on the left to see the UK’s departure from the EU as an opportunity to rebalance the economy

Larry Elliott is consistent in his criticism of the EU (The left must stop mourning Brexit – and start seeing its huge potential, 31 December). He points out the neoliberalism inherent in the core EU policies of free movement of goods, services, capital and people. He then extols the advantages for the UK of being freed from EU shackles to pursue its own destiny in the world.

But aren’t we committed to chasing the same neoliberalism on a broader canvas? He says nothing of the EU’s social and political projects – health and safety, employment protection, social welfare, retirement rights and other programmes. He ignores the ambitions of a gradual rapprochement between nations that engaged in monstrous wars in the recent past. Brexit UK is moving backwards, self-condemned to continued national decline, as other countries find ways of developing at least some elements of a progressive agenda in a harsh and divided world.
Peter Taylor-Gooby
Professor of social policy, University of Kent

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Come clean on logjams at British borders as new Brexit rules kick in, ministers told

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Amid confusion for lorry drivers in Kent, logistics firms call for greater transparency to help lessen disruption

Ministers are facing demands for more honesty and transparency over any logjams at the UK border in the wake of Britain’s exit from the EU, amid concerns that waves of disruption will last for six months.

Several lorry drivers are understood to have been turned away at Dover for not having the right paperwork following the end of the Brexit transition period last week. It has caused concern among logistics and manufacturing companies that more severe problems could occur as trade flows increase later this month.

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Spain says it will have last word on Gibraltar border entries

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Agreement in principle will allow territory to join the Schengen free movement area

Spain will have the last word on who can enter Gibraltar under the terms of the preliminary post-Brexit deal announced this week, Spain’s foreign minister has said, in an assertion that was swiftly challenged by Gibraltar’s chief minister.

The agreement in principle – struck just hours before Gibraltar was poised to become the only frontier marked by a hard Brexit – will allow the British overseas territory to join the Schengen free movement area with Spain acting as a guarantor.

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Brexit is nothing to celebrate, says Ireland’s foreign minister

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As first ferries arrive under new trade rules, Simon Coveney warns of disruption to come

Brexit is “not something to celebrate”, Ireland’s foreign minister Simon Coveney declared after the UK formally severed ties with the EU, as he warned of trading disruptions due to fresh red tape.

Related: Political demands of Brexit now face economic reality

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Football, flights and food: how the EU reshaped Britain

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As Brexit’s tangible effects kick in, we look at the impact the EU’s most far-reaching project has had on British society

Historians of the future will judge the politics of the half century before the Brexit transition ended on 1 January 2021. What, though, of social and cultural historians, those who study how we live?

Perhaps the most symbolic cultural artefacts of the last 50 years will turn out not to be a blue flag but a bottle of Blue Nun, a block of mozzarella, a Ryanair boarding printout or a ticket to a Bayern Munich v Manchester City football game.

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Brexit: in crisis, without fanfare, UK finally ends the EU era

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Boris Johnson largely ignores Brexit in new year message to focus on toll of Covid and ‘the grimness of 2020’

Four years, 27 weeks and two days after a referendum that split the country almost down the middle, the UK left the EU’s orbit on Thursday night in a departure that was notably low key, and marked by warnings of likely disruption to come.

In a sometimes sombre new year message, Boris Johnson largely ignored Brexit, an outcome he arguably shaped more than any other politician, to focus instead on the toll of Covid-19 and what he called “the grimness of 2020”.

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Spain and UK reach draft deal on post-Brexit status of Gibraltar

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British overseas territory had been left out of deal announced on Christmas Eve

A last-minute deal between the UK and Spain – agreed just hours before Gibraltar was poised to become the only frontier marked by a hard Brexit – will allow for free movement between the British overseas territory and much of the EU.

“Today is a day for hope,” Spain’s foreign minister, Arancha González Laya, said on Thursday as she announced that an agreement in principle had been reached. “In the long history of our relations with the UK, related to Gibraltar, today we’re facing a turning point.”

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View from the EU: Britain ‘taken over by gamblers, liars, clowns and their cheerleaders’

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European commentators weigh in on what Britain’s departure from the EU means

Britain faces an uncertain future as it finally pulls clear of the EU’s orbit, continental commentators have predicted, its reputation for pragmatism and probity shredded by a Brexit process most see as profoundly populist and dangerously dishonest.

“For us, the UK has always been seen as like-minded: economically progressive, politically stable, respect for the rule of law – a beacon of western liberal democracy,” said Rem Korteweg, of the Clingendael Institute thinktank in the Netherlands.

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EU states unanimously back Brexit trade and security deal

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Backing of EU27 paves way for new arrangements between UK and EU to come into force on 1 January

The post-Brexit trade and security deal has been unanimously backed by EU member states, paving the way for the new arrangements to come into force on 1 January.

At a meeting of ambassadors in Brussels, the 27 member states gave their support for the 1,246-page treaty to be “provisionally applied” at the end of the year. The decision will be formally completed by written procedure at 3pm central European time (1400 GMT) on Tuesday.

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