SIMPLY WHAT DOES THE WTO REALLY


MEAN FOR US? The New Year has brought increased uncertainty with regards to Brexit. The phrases ‘no deal’ and ‘WTO rules’ continue to be thrown around in both the political sphere and the UK media.


By extension there is increased interest in events such as ‘Operation Brock’ organized by  using 89 lorries to see how they would deal with potentially 1000 or more being stuck at  uncertain as the public about whether a Brexit ‘deal’ can be made with the EU, and passed by Parliament. With this being the case WTO rules are becoming ever more likely, but what does that really mean?


In short as described by the WTO itself: ‘The World Trade Organization (WTO) is the only global international organization dealing with the rules of trade between nations.’ Although the UK is currently recognized through the EU, it does actually have membership in its own  WTO member countries since 17th June 1987 and according to the WTO website is still only half way through the process. As such we have the right to use the WTO trade rules. Another way to look at this fact is that the WTO is incredibly complex, and as such it should come as no surprise that although WTO members default position is to trade on WTO terms, in practice none do so without additional agreements.


 quotas (limits on the number of goods) that they can apply to other countries. These are known as the WTO schedules. The UK’s commitments are currently bundled up with the EU as a whole. Therefore it now has to separate its commitments from those originally given by the EU. Positively the UK has already submitted documents to the WTO in Geneva, along with the EU mirroring these decisions. The UK has stated that it wants to make a few technical changes to its current commitments as an EU member, but otherwise will leave them largely unchanged. The reality of this is that the UK and EU have estimated percentages for products based on what they believe each received between the years of  for New Zealand lamb coming into the EU is 230,000mt, meaning everything up to this  on the principle outlined earlier this resulted in a 50-50 split for the UK and EU. However New Zealand has objected to this, arguing that this deprives exporters the choice of 28 national EU markets to choose from. This is but one of many examples and, ideally, this all has to be agreed before the UK leaves in March.


12 | ADMISI - The Ghost In The Machine | January/February 2019


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