Politicians came in for a severe drubbing Tuesday from wine and spirit traders at Vinexpo, one of the world’s largest wine fairs. Speaking at a panel discussion on Brexit, Miles Beale from the Wine and Spirit Trade Association (WSTA) said the best outcome for wine traders would be no changes to trade processes or documents and no playing games with the wine sector or throwing it under the bus.
French wine producer Sean Allison – a New Zealander, who watched a trade crisis unfold when Britain joined the then EEC in 1973 and dropped its New Zealand dairy imports – warned that trade agreements “don’t happen the way Boris Johnson” thinks they do. “It took 30-odd years of hard negotiation [for New Zealand to get new] free trade agreements in place,” he said. “Politicians know nothing about the details of trade or what needs to happen.”
Jean-Marie Barillère, president of the Union of Champagne Houses, agreed, saying Brexit must be a “non-event” in UK-EU trade terms, despite a political desire for the UK to be held up as a warning to other countries.
Asked about immediate actions, Beale has prepared a crib sheet for all political negotiators. “We are essentially trying to give a single piece of paper to [Michel] Barnier (EU Brexit negotiator), the relevant French and UK ministers, and the 26 in between, that says: ‘This is what we as the industry would like you to agree. Please don’t mess with it, don’t trade it off against something else. We are united in what we want, please just deliver’.”
Beale and other panellists agreed that keys to a successful Brexit for the wine trade would include little or no change to current trading arrangements, particularly in terms of customs documentation, and, prior warning and adequate transition periods if are changes. Beale, who has been working with Barillère already, started lobbying politicians last November. He said his document avoids dictating terms, but simply describes desired outcomes and facts, such as the impossibility of restricting free movement of people and staying in the single market. “And you can’t stay in the customs union if you want to do trade deals outside of that … with other wine producing nations, so at some point we have to come out,” he said, adding that the process will take longer than two years.
On a more optimistic note, Beale hailed what he saw as emerging Brexit process, with first a divorce over two years, then a new trade deal, followed by a phased implementation, saying this should remove at least some of the uncertainty that has been an inherent part of Brexit from the start.
While foreign exchange was agreed to be an issue for the wine and spirits sector, it is also considered something that traders are used to dealing with. More important is the issue of profitably and free movement. “The labour market is another way of saying immigration policy,” Sean Allison said. “If we don’t have access to those people,” in the hospitality sector, then “we will have a very difficult situation in terms of profitability.”
Sopie Kevany
