Britain should not expect special deal on Brexit, says Italian PM

London / AFP

Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi on Thursday said Britain should not expect special treatment in Brexit talks, as the British trade minister warned the EU would hurt itself if it imposed tariffs.
Renzi’s comments are the latest from a European leader to highlight the tough stance Britain is likely to face when trying to negotiate access to the European market while introducing controls on immigration after it triggers Article 50, the two-year process for leaving the bloc.
“It will be impossible to give to British people more rights than other people out of the EU,” Renzi said, a reference to countries that are not part of the European Union.
“When David Cameron decided to use the referendum to solve some internal problem in the Conservative party, this was the problem,” he added in an English-language interview with the BBC.
Cameron quit as prime minister hours after Britain’s shock referendum vote in June to leave the EU, having led the failed campaign to remain in the bloc.
He was seen as having called the vote in a bid to placate eurosceptic Conservatives and stem the rise of the anti-EU UK Independence Party.
International Trade Minister Liam Fox meanwhile said Britain’s trade with EU members after Brexit should be “at least as free” as it is now.
“Protectionism never actually helps anybody at all and as we move into a post-Brexit arena, we want it to be as free and as open as possible,” he said.
“And don’t just look at it from the UK perspective, the European Union has a massive surplus in goods with the UK. Who does it harm more if we end up in a new tariff environment? Does it harm more those who sell more to the UK, or the UK?” he added.
“It’s in everybody’s interests that, as we move forward, that we have at least as free a trading environment as we have today,” he said, warning that tariffs “will harm the people of Europe”.
In a new report out Thursday, the Institute for Government think-tank warned that planning for Brexit could cost Britain’s government £65 million (75 million euros, $85 million) a year.
It also urged Prime Minister Theresa May to make clear when she plans to activate Article 50.

UK moving forward with China ties post-Brexit

Bloomberg

U.K. officials have held preliminary talks with China about establishing a trade agreement following the Brexit vote, Jo Hawley, director of trade and investment at the British Consulate-General in Hong Kong, said on Thursday.
“We hope that coming out of the EU gives us an opportunity to look at free-trade agreements with other countries,” Hawley said at a Hong Kong University of Science and Technology seminar. “We’re very keen to push that forward with the Chinese in particular. China is the big prize.”
At the Group of 20 summit in Hangzhou, China, earlier this month Chinese President Xi Jinping told U.K. Prime Minister Theresa May that China was open to bilateral trade talks. The U.K. government on Sept. 15 approved the so-called Hinkley Point plan, allowing Electricite de France SA and China General Nuclear Power Corp. to build two nuclear reactors in southwest England.
While Britain can’t make any trade agreements with other governments until its exit from the EU is made official, preliminary talks are being held. The U.K. can’t agree to a free-trade agreement “until we’ve left the European Union, so at the moment we can only do the preparatory work,” Hawley said.
She said her team had held discussions with Gregory So, Hong Kong’s secretary for commerce and economic development, and visiting U.K. officials had spoken to ministers in the Hong Kong government.
“We took Jeffrey Mountevans, the Lord Mayor of the City of London, to see various ministers and said we would really welcome opening discussions about free-trade agreements, and they were very warm and keen to be among the first group that we take that forward with,” Hawley said.
“Likewise, my colleagues have been in to discussions in mainland China.”
She said negotiations on a China-EU trade deal had been very difficult and had not led to a deal. “We feel we would be able to agree on one because it’s easier as an individual country rather than as the big bloc to keep everybody happy.”