Vorbereitungen: Chaotischer, harter BREXIT

Im Dezember 2018 zeichnet sich ab: Die britische Premier-Ministerin T. May wird „zuhause“ wahrscheinlich keine Mehrheit für die Modalitäten des Ausstiegs am 29.3.2019 bekommen – ein „harter“ BREXIT, d.h. ein Ausstieg ohne Übergangsbestimmungen ist dann unvermeidbar.

Dies wird Auswirkungen auf alle beteiligten (EU-Institutionen, Regierungen, Verwaltungen, Wirtschaft, Bürger) haben. Um das Chaos zu gut wie möglich zu bewältigen, hat die EU-Kommission detaillierte Informationen ins Netz gestellt.

Communication of 19 December 2018 : “Preparing for the withdrawal of the United Kingdom from the European Union on 30 March 2019: Implementing the Commission’s Contingency Action Plan” (link)

Brexit preparedness Legislative initiatives and other legal acts

No Deal BREXIT: Informationen für Unternehmen (link)

Artikel zum BREXIT (link)

Die britische Regierung rechnet seit August 2018 mit der Möglichkeit, dass UK aus der EU ausscheidet, ohne dass eine Übergangsregelung getroffen werden konnte oder die Beziehungen zur EU für die Zeit nach dem Austritt geregelt wurden (Hard BREXIT). Für diesen Fall werden verschiedene „Anleitungen“ veröffentlicht (link)

Die Europäische Kommission hat einen Website für ihr BREXIT-Team eingerichtet (BREXIT-Team der EU)

Quellen und Materialien zum BREXIT

Verhältnis von Großbritannien zur EU – vorher

Clemens, G. 2017. Vergebliches werben um den „Brentrance“ – Grossbritannien und Europa 1967. APuZ, (5-7), 21–26 (link)

Geddes, A. 2013. Britain and the European Union. Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan.

Minford u.a.: Economists for Free Trade (ehemals: Economists for BREXIT), [https://www.economistsforfreetrade.com/]

Minford, P.; Gupta, S., et al. 2015. Should Britain leave the EU? An economic analysis of a troubled relationship. Cheltenham, Northampton: Elgar.

Loth, W. 2014. Europas Einigung. Eine unvollendete Geschichte. Frankfurt (M), New York: Campus-Verlag; zum Beitritt Großbritanniens bes. S. 100-106, 150-156.

Wer hat für den BREXIT gestimmt?

• ALABRESE, E., S. O. BECKER, T. FETZER and D. NOVY (2018). „Who Voted for Brexit? Individual and Regional Data Combined.“ CEPR Discussion Paper (DP13110).
• „Who Voted for Brexit? A Comprehensive District-Level Analysis“, CESifo Working Paper Series No. 6438; Sascha O. Becker; Thiemo Fetzer; Dennis Novy (download)

(EU-) Ausländer arbeiten in Großbritannien

Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD). 2015. The growth of EU labour: Assessing the impact on the UK labour market, London (link)

Rienzo, C. 2016. Characteristics and Outcomes of Migrants in the UK Labour Market, Oxford: The Migration Observatory – Univ. Oxford (link)

Rienzo, C. 2016. Migrants in the UK Labour Market: An Overview, Oxford: The Migration Observatory – Univ. Oxford (link)

BREXIT – wirtschaftliche Auswirkungen

Lawlessa, M. and Morgenroth, E.L.W. 2016. The Product and Sector Level Impact of a Hard Brexit across the EU. ESRI Working Paper, (550) (link)

The UK exit from the European Union (Brexit) is likely to have a range of impacts, with trade flows likely to be most affected. One possible outcome of Brexit is a situation where WTO tariffs apply to merchandise trade between the UK and the EU. By examining detailed trade flows between the UK and all other EU members, matching over 5200 products to the WTO tariff applicable to external EU trade this paper shows that such an outcome would result in significantly different impacts across countries. Our estimates of exposure at the country level show an extremely wide range with reductions in trade to the UK falling by 5% (Finland) to 43% (Bulgaria) taking into account the new tariffs and the elasticity of the trade response to this price increase. Food and textiles trade are the hardest hit, with trade in these sectors reducing by up to 90%.

Brexit: The Economics of International Disintegration. CESifo working paper series, (6668). (link)

This paper reviews the literature on the likely economic consequences of Brexit and considers the lessons of the Brexit vote for the future of European and global integration. Brexit will make the United Kingdom poorer because it will lead to new barriers to trade and migration between the United Kingdom and the European Union. Plausible estimates put the costs to the United Kingdom at between 1 and 10 percent of income per capita. Other European Union countries will also suffer economically, but their estimated losses are much smaller. Support for Brexit came from a coalition of less-educated, older, less economically successful and more socially conservative voters. Why these voters rejected the European Union is poorly understood, but will play an important role in determining whether Brexit proves to be merely a diversion on the path to greater international integration or a sign that globalization has reached its limits.

BREXIT und Irland

Barrett, A.; Bergin, A., et al. 2015. Scoping the Possible Economic Implications of Brexit on Ireland. ESRI RESEARCH SERIES, 48 (link)

With the election success of the Conservative Party in the UK in the recent general election, the new UK government is committed to holding a referendum on EU membership following negotiations between the UK and the EU on key issues of concern to the UK government. While the outcome of these negotiations and the possible referendum are uncertain, a number of scenarios for the future relationship between the UK and the EU can be identified. These include situations in which the UK remains in a reformed EU and situations where it leaves. In the latter case, further sets of possibilities exist which differ in terms of the extent to which current arrangements with respect to free trade, for example, are maintained or dismantled.
A changed relationship between the UK and the EU could potentially have far-reaching consequences for Ireland especially if there were changes in areas such as trade and migration. Given this, the goals of this study are as follows:
• to describe and quantify the key economic linkages which have developed over time between Ireland and the UK in the context of EU membership, and
• arising from the above, to make an initial assessment of the risks and opportunities to these economic linkages in the context of potential future developments at EU-level, in particular a UK exit from the EU.

The following areas are covered in the analysis: trade, foreign direct investment, energy and migration. While the focus of the analysis in the report is within those four areas, a broader macroeconomic view is included. As most analyses suggest that a Brexit will have negative implications for the UK economy, a simulation is included which shows how reduced GDP in the UK leads to reduced demand for Irish exports and hence reduced GDP in Ireland.
The main findings are as follows:

Trade
• Estimates from the literature suggest that a Brexit is likely to significantly reduce bilateral trade flows between Ireland and the UK. The impact could be 20 per cent or more.
• While the 20 per cent estimate is an average figure, the impact would differ significantly across sectors and products. For merchandise trade in particular, trade is very concentrated in a few product types, which implies that increased trade barriers for the most important products would have a particularly significant impact on total trade volumes.
• Some sectors such as Chemicals and Pharmaceuticals account for a large share of exports to the UK; however sectors such as Agriculture, Food and Beverages and Basic Metals are relatively more dependent on exports to the UK and so the impacts on them would be more severe.
• Trade between Ireland and Northern Ireland has been declining as a share and the overall volume is below the level expected for two trading partners located on an island. Overall Ireland is more important to Northern Irish exporters than Northern Ireland is for Irish exporters so, again, there would be differing impacts of a Brexit.

Foreign Direct Investment
• The UK outside the EU would be less attractive to FDI because of uncertainty and reduced access to the EU Single Market. Less FDI in the UK would be likely to translate into a lower potential growth in the UK with negative consequences on Ireland’s economic growth.
• It might be thought that this negative effect could be counterbalanced by a positive boost for Ireland through additional FDI projects relocating from the UK. However, on the basis of patterns of the location choice of new FDI projects in Europe over the past ten years, the expected additional attractiveness of Ireland to new FDI projects is likely to be small.
• Corporate tax reforms in the UK are likely to increase the attractiveness of the UK to FDI while the magnitude of their negative impact on Ireland’s attractiveness is expected to be small.
• These effects arise in part from the fact that Ireland’s attractiveness to FDI is already high, relative to its size and geographical position in Europe. Relative to Ireland, the UK has a number of attractiveness advantages due to its larger market size and better performance with respect to financial market development, technological and innovation capacity, macroeconomic environment, and labour market efficiency. These advantages are likely to continue to attract FDI to the UK even outside the EU. Ireland’s advantage relative to the UK’s attractiveness to FDI is its more competitive corporate taxation.

Energy
• The first point that needs to be noted is the fact that an all-island electricity market has existed since 2007. Interconnection between Ireland and Northern Ireland is particularly important for Northern Ireland which relies on electricity imports from Ireland to make up for insufficient local electricity generation capacity.
• If the electricity market in Britain remains independent of the rest of the EU, enhanced interconnection with Britain would leave Ireland vulnerable to any problems in the British market. Under these circumstances enhanced interconnection by Ireland with the rest of the EU, most probably to France, could provide useful diversification, reducing risk for Irish consumers. However, this would require a large infrastructural investment.
• If the UK left the EU, it would no longer be subject to EU rules on climate change policy and renewables. Outside the EU, there would be a lower chance that they would reopen discussions on trade in renewables.
• If the UK left the EU it would no longer be subject to EU regulatory measures to deal with a possible crisis situation in the case of a gas or oil shortage. Ireland would then have to consider how best to provide protection from very unlikely, but potentially catastrophic outcomes.

Migration
• A UK exit from the EU opens up the possibility of restrictions on the free movement of people between Ireland and the UK for the purposes of work. As the UK remains an important destination for Irish emigrants especially at times of high unemployment, such restrictions could have implications for the Irish labour market.
• More broadly, the imposition of passport controls at the border with Northern Ireland would be at best inconvenient and at worst a worryingly regressive step in terms of facilitating cooperation between both parts of the island. This is possibly the strongest reason which can be advanced when arguing in favour of the maintenance of the CTA.
• Finally, almost 400,000 people who were born in the Republic of Ireland were resident in the UK in 2011. Similarly almost 230,000 British-born people were resident in Ireland in 2011. While many of these people in both jurisdictions will have passports which relate to their current residencies as opposed to their places of birth, many others could find themselves post-Brexit being resident in a country where their right to residency has come into question.