Category: Data transfers

Boris Johnson, Brexit, Data transfers, Michel Barnier, Negotiating, Trade Deals

Brexifornia: Checking out but never leaving

Posted on by BEERG Brexit Blog

express

Brexit will never be over.

Brexit may be “done”, but there is no end state, no finish line, just a never-ending, groundhog day marathon. This even appears to be the case with (what we thought was) the signed and sealed Withdrawal Agreement (WA), the one Boris Johnson negotiated with the EU late in 2019.

One headline in the British press on Sunday read:

“Boris wants to fix unfair Brexit deal.”

But was not this the “oven ready” deal that Johnson told the UK electorate just needed to be “popped into the microwave”?

One government source told journalists: “Unfortunately we couldn’t fix every defect with the Withdrawal Agreement last autumn … we’ll now have to do our best to fix it but we’re starting with a clear disadvantage.”

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Backstop, Boris Johnson, Brexit, Customs Union, Data transfers, Single Market, Theresa May, UK Labour Party

Can #Brexit be “Made to Work” (Part 1).

Posted on by BEERG Brexit Blog
Thsi blogpost was written early on Tuesday Sept 10th
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Pic via Stephen Morgan (Lab) MP on Twitter

An article in the Times reports that David Frost, Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s Brexit negotiator, told Johnson that there was no hope of agreeing a new deal on the Irish backstop while uncertainty in parliament continues. According to the Times:

In a one-page memo to Mr Johnson and his chief adviser, Dominic Cummings, Mr Frost wrote that until there was clarity on the domestic front the European Union would not offer a renewed deal.

“The EU are not under pressure to agree alternative arrangements until they know the process will not be taken over by parliament,” he wrote. “Until then they will listen to us but avoid committing. Talks will only become serious when it’s a choice between deal or no deal.”

Frost’s comment on the opposition in Parliament to the Johnson approach to Brexit reminded me of when I first started thinking and writing about Brexit some two years ago. Then it seemed to me that if the UK was to “make Brexit work” three things were of fundamental importance.

  1. The government needed to develop a consensus in the UK about what Brexit meant, some form of widely-shared vision of what the UK outside the EU should look like.
  2. Resulting from one, negotiate a future deal with the EU that would minimise the impact of withdrawal on the UK economy and provide for a “good neighbour” relationship for the future
  3. Hope that geopolitical developments across the globe would fall favourable for a UK out of the EU, facilitating the conclusion of new trade deals which would open new export markets.

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Brexit, Data transfers, Single Market

First Rule of #Brexit: If it can go wrong it probably will

Posted on by BEERG Brexit Blog
This blog was written early on Sat August 31st 2019

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Sometimes, all you can do is to shake your head in disbelief. I’m not talking about Boris Johnson’s decision to suspend parliament for five weeks to push through a no-deal Brexit to guarantee the future sovereignty of parliament. After all, was not returning sovereignty to parliament from the clutches of Brussels what the slogan “take back control” was all about? What better way of returning sovereignty to parliament than suspending parliament. See this By Chris Grey on what all this means.

No, I’m talking about the fact that every day it becomes clearer that those who have campaigned longest and hardest for the UK to leave the EU have no real idea what this will actually mean in practice. The day-to-day consequences of the UK putting new barriers between itself and the largest, single market in the world have never been thought out.

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Article 50, Backstop, Boris Johnson, Brexit, Data transfers

Brexit: To Go On Forever?

Posted on by BEERG Brexit Blog
This blogpost was written late on August 17th 2019
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Queues of lorries near the Port of Dover via the BBC website

During the past week, while the political manoeuvring to block a no-deal Brexit grabbed all the headlines, probably the most significant development was one that would have fallen below most people’s radar, politicians included.

It was this Tweet from the French Embassy setting out the sanitary and phytosanitary controls that plant and animal product exporters from the UK could expect at French borders when the UK becomes a “third country”, out of the EU. Words to set the heart racing: “sanitary and phytosanitary controls”, are defined by the EU as “measures to protect humans, animals, and plants from diseases, pests, or contaminants.”

Such controls mean the end to “frictionless” trade and will lead to delays at borders. How extensive will the delays be? Who can say? All it takes to start a queue is one or two overly eager customs officers determined to make sure a trucker’s paperwork is in order. A very long queue.

Remember the chaos some months ago when French customs went on a “Brexit warning” strike? Chaos back up to the Belgian border, some 50K from Calais.

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Brexit, Data Protection, Data transfers, GDPR, Michel Barnier

BEERG #Brexit Blog: A Data Special:- @MichelBarnier highlights #data as a critical issue

Posted on by BEERG Brexit Blog

This BEERG Brexit Blog is a special issue looking at critical data issues that have been recently highlighted, but which were also forecast here many months ago:

BarnierSpeaking at the 28th Congress of the International Federation for European Law (FIDE) in Lisbon last weekend, the EU’s chief negotiator Michel Barnier devoted a considerable section of his Lisbon speech to the impact of Brexit on data transfers between the EU and UK post Brexit, saying: “the UK must understand that the only possibility for the EU to protect personal data is through an adequacy decision”.

Here is that portion of M. Barnier’s speech – the BEERG analysis appears after it.

“The United Kingdom wants to leave. That is its decision. Not ours. And that has consequences. Allow me to give an example. The General Data Protection Regulation – GDPR – came into force yesterday. According to the United Kingdom’s position first presented – and published – this week on data protection:

The United Kingdom would like its supervisor to remain on the European Data Protection Board, created by the GDPR.

It wants to remain in the one-stop-shop.

It believes that this is in the interest of EU businesses.

But let’s be clear: Brexit is not, and never will be, in the interest of EU businesses. And it will especially run counter to the interests of our businesses if we abandon our decision-making autonomy. This autonomy allows us to set standards for the whole of the EU, but also to see these standards being replicated around the world. Continue reading →

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Brexit, Data Protection, Data transfers, GDPR, Macron, Parody

“Talking to the Board”: A #Brexit Fable

Posted on by BEERG Brexit Blog

This blog was written on February 3rd 2018.

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From the hotel window he could see across the roofs of Fisherman’s Wharf to Alcatraz, with the Golden Gate Bridge off in the background. Images that evoked The Rock and Bullitt or, for those with longer memories, the TV series The Streets of San Francisco, with Karl Malden and a very young Michael Douglas.

But James “Jim” Johnson wasn’t there to engage in remembrances of movies past or to admire the view. As the UK Executive Director of 4Zero, one of the US’s leading transnationals in the IT space, he was there to pitch to a board committee on a new $500m+ project, with around 1,200 jobs, to be located in Europe, developing state of the art computer security systems, vital for governments and businesses at a time when terrorist and state-backed cyber guerrilla war campaigns were the stuff of daily life.

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