Checks on imports of fresh food from the European Union, of which the country is no longer a member following the 2016 Brexit referendum, will officially begin in the UK on 30 April. These checks are designed to mirror those introduced by the EU for British products soon after the UK left the single market in January 2021 and were due to come into force at the same time, but have since been postponed five times.
However, a few hours after the start of this new phase, many experts and workers in the sector, both in the European Union and in the United Kingdom, are criticizing the government for not having clarified some critical aspects of the new system, which they claim is not still ready to apply the new rules: this could cause significant delays and compromise the safety of products, such as meat, which cannot remain stuck at the border for too long. Added to this is the very large amount of documents needed, and the higher taxes that will come into force, which they have already brought many European companies, especially small and medium-sized ones, to increase prices for their goods destined for the United Kingdom.
The same had happened when entry controls into the Union were activated, but it is thought that the effects for the United Kingdom could be much worse: the British government predicts that taxes will increase food prices by 0.2 percent over three years, but other estimates suggest the loss of purchasing power for consumers could be much higher.
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The critical issues of the new controls concern goods defined as medium or high risk: the first group includes food products of animal origin, such as most meat, fish and cheese, and vegetables, while the second includes some products based on meat, live animals and plants and seeds intended for planting on British land.
As of January 2024, European companies exporting fresh produce to the UK had already had to start submitting detailed health certificates to British customs certifying the absence of diseases in each type of product. Each certificate must also be validated by a veterinarian of the country of origin and its cost may vary: as explained in an article Of Bloomberg which concerns the export of pork from Denmark, which is the largest exporter of this product to the UK, each certificate costs approximately €16 and one certificate may be needed for each lorry.
Until now, presenting these certificates was enough to allow the goods to enter the United Kingdom, but from 30 April a further step will be added, which is the one that worries associations for the protection of traders and consumers the most: according to the new border system , British Customs will have to subject cargoes considered to be medium and high risk to additional quality and safety checks. These checks will be carried out in facilities specially built by the companies that manage British ports, which are almost all privately owned, which will be divided into three sections: one for staff who check low-risk products, i.e. those not intended for food consumption ; one for border law enforcement agencies tasked with combating smuggling; the last one for veterinarians who will have to inspect the highest risk agri-food products for possible parasites and diseases. Controls of this type are already carried out on goods arriving from non-European countries, but the quantity of goods coming from the Union is much higher, given that until now it had been extremely more advantageous to import European goods which did not need to go through any type of check.
British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen during a news conference in February 2023 (Dan Kitwood/Pool via AP)
Various associations and experts have identified various problems in these control stations. The first is the distance: the structures of the port of Immingham, which is located on the North Sea near Manchester and where a lot of the pork imported from the Union arrives, were for example built a mile from the coast, but those of the port of Dover, opposite France and which handles a third of the United Kingdom’s trade with the Union, are located about 35 kilometers from the port. The Dover Port Health Authority has warned that all these inland checks could seriously compromise “the UK’s entire biosecurity and border system” with a high risk of delays which could cause perishable products to rot (as well as food fraud, due to bureaucratic management which at least initially will still be cumbersome).
In addition, these checks should be financed by European exporting companies through the payment of a tax that can reach up to 145 pounds per load for the most high-risk goods. However, the British govt has not yet provided a common IT system at the ports that allows them to collect these taxes quickly. In a meeting with port operators in mid-April, officials from the Environment Department said they were working on this database, but that it could take a few more months to make it operational. Criticism is particularly harsh in this field because some ports have had these facilities ready for years, but until now have not been able to use them due to continuous delays from the British government.
A further problem, reported by Financial Times after having had access to documents from a conference of the Department of the Environment, it is that of the excess controls caused by errors in the compilation of certificates by European companies. The department has reported that small administrative errors could lead to misclassification of goods loads by the UK IT systems used for customs control, with the result that thousands of lorries would be mistakenly sent to border control facilities, overloading them and leading to large delays. The error rate for completing documents is currently 33 percent.
For this reason, as reported by Financial Times, the government he would decide that starting from April 30, if a port finds itself overwhelmed by the amount of goods waiting, these physical checks will only have to concern high-risk goods, and that “comprehensive control rates and high levels of compliance” will gradually be achieved.
One way to avoid these delays would be establish a bilateral veterinary agreement between the European Union and the United Kingdom, which would harmonize the rules of farming and trade in agri-food products and eliminate many of these physical checks. The Union has had an agreement of this type for some time with Switzerland, but Rishi Sunak’s government has ruled out wanting to negotiate with European countries to reach an agreement of this type. This option is supported by the Labor Party, now in opposition but favored in the polls for the legislative elections to be held at the end of the year, but reaching such an agreement could take years.