UK Urged to Fix Trade Friction, Customs Delays With EU
British companies are still seeing significant post-Brexit trade delays and disruptions when moving goods to and from the EU, including steel products, jets, autos, agricultural goods and more, U.K. industry officials told the country’s Parliament this week. They urged the U.K. government to resolve a range of customs issues with the EU and negotiate carve-outs from upcoming EU tariffs, especially as they said the U.K.’s trade relationship with the U.S. grows more unpredictable.
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Liam Byrne, chair of the U.K. Parliament’s Business and Trade Committee, said British lawmakers have “heard, frankly, a world of pain” from U.K. traders who are worse off now than they were before the U.K. left the EU in 2020.
“Exports to the EU are down. We've heard traders are filling in a million forms” and facing billions of pounds in “red-tape” customs costs, Byrne said. “Prices are higher. Steel is facing disastrous tariffs. I don't think people voted for this.”
More than half a dozen British industry representatives told the committee during a Jan. 13 hearing that their products are routinely facing delays at the border, either from long wait times or excessive paperwork.
Toby Ovens, managing director at Broughton Transport, a British logistics company, said he frequently faces long wait times at the Channel Tunnel, which connects the U.K. and France, including one shipment of frozen meat that sat for 27 days. He said the delay was caused by a “paperwork error” and led to a 16,000 pound invoice for a customer because the “vehicle sat there for a month.”
Oriel Petry, senior vice president at Airbus U.K., said the company now faces “more paperwork” when it wants to ship products to the EU, even those that are identical to an item that Airbus easily exported before Brexit. She said Airbus previously had to fill out about 15 customs forms, and now it must go through as many as 50.
“Even one tiny wing part can require four forms in the way that … it didn't require before, even though, of course, the product hasn't changed,” Petry said. “I think that there's opportunity there at a very practical, technical level to make it easier.”
Sean McGuire, director for Europe and international at the Confederation of British Industry, said most of its members are less concerned about rising tariffs and more worried about the increasing “regulatory divergence” between the U.K. and the EU. “Even if our rules are identical, we have to conform with the EU and prove that the rules are identical or our standards are identical, and, therefore, that requires additional paperwork.”
McGuire also urged the U.K. and the EU to “revisit” the EU’s upcoming rules of origin for electric vehicles, which, starting in 2027, will grant preferential treatment only to U.K. electric cars with 45% content made in either the U.K. or the EU. He said he’s concerned this is an example of Brussels’ increasing shift toward protectionism as a response to similar trade measures by the U.S. and China.
“Maybe this is the appropriate moment to introduce the kind of conversations that are happening in Brussels and in member states in response to the change of the global order” after U.S. President Donald Trump introduced tariffs, McGuire said. The EU is “looking at how does it deal with a very aggressive China and a more unpredictable U.S.?” He added that the bloc “has become much more protectionist in this past twelve months than it has ever been.”
Peter Brennan, director of trade and economic policy with U.K. Steel, also stressed the importance of aligning trade regulations with the EU and partnering in the face of rising “trade barriers” by the U.S. He urged London to work with the EU so the bloc’s steel import quota isn’t reduced, especially after the European Commission published a proposal in October to shrink the size of its tariff-rate quota for steel to 18.3 million tons a year and double the tariff rate for out-of-quota steel to 50% (see 2510070027).
Asked how a 50% EU tariff would affect the British steel industry, Brennan said it would likely "significantly" reduce U.K. exports to the EU. U.K. steel companies want the EU TRQ for British steel to “be as high as possible,” he said, and if London can negotiate an exemption, “that's great.” But he believes Brussels likely doesn’t want to offer exemptions “because traders will find ways of doing loopholes for bringing in stuff. So what we really want is allocation -- allocation as high as possible.”
In addition, the two sides should be cooperating on their respective carbon border tariff schemes, Brennan said, which should include exemptions for British firms, especially smaller ones. The EU announced in December that it was planning to expand the scope of its carbon tariff, which took effect Jan. 1 (see 2512180026). The U.K.’s carbon duty will start to take effect in 2027.
“The uncertainty is a massive problem for everyone exporting, but the sheer amount of paperwork for smaller companies in particular -- it just makes it unworkable,” Brennan said. “And at the moment, the way that the EU has implemented the [carbon border adjustment mechanism], it's very, very complicated. And lots of importers have basically just got ahead of the curve and imported as much as possible, because they don't want to work out the headaches.”