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LORD GREEN: "A CORE STRATEGY OF THE BRITISH GOVERNMENT WILL BE TO BE AN OPEN TRADING PARTNER TO SWITZERLAND."

Lord Stephen Green, former UK Minister of State for Trade and currently Chairman of the Asia House in London, will be speaking at the Asia Leaders Series Event on April 12 in Zurich about Britain’s future relationship with Europe and the rise of Asia. Prior to his visit to Zurich, we had the opportunity to talk to him about his views on Brexit and the implications for trade relations on Switzerland and Europe.

Interview: Sibylle Zumstein

Lord Green, 29 March marked the first step of Britain’s departure from the EU: Prime Minister Theresa May formally kicked-off the two-year process to exit the European Union. Was this a historic event?
In my opinion it was. It represents a new departure for the country that is the most significant one since 1949 when NATO was established. Since the referendum and our government’s commitment to abide by it, a lot of work and thinking was done about the implications of all this in public and within the business community. During the referendum campaign nobody had any real idea of what the decision to leave would actually mean in practice. Today, we have reached a point where the government has tabled the letter and set the priorities for the new relationship with the EU and Britain's new place in the world. We now face a two-year period of the Article 50 negotiations and most likely continued discussions, since a lot of details will need to be sorted out, particularly in trade.
What next steps can we expect?
The government has made it clearer that it does not expect to be a member of the Single Market or remain within the common external tariff. Those are pretty clear positions. Britain will seek to negotiate a deep and comprehensive free trade agreement with the EU. The EU has not yet formally responded but Chief EU negotiator Michel Barnier has made it clear that the two high-priority items that everybody will want to deal with first are: budgetary responsibilities and sorting out the position of EU citizens in the UK and British citizens in the EU.
The media have used the analogy of a divorce. What’s your take on this?
Obviously, Britain leaving the EU as second largest member state is a major event and it will have implications for reflection within the EU about its future course, but the divorce isn’t a very helpful analogy. What we need to think about are the shared interests of Britain and the EU going forward, and those are extensive. With over 40% of British exports going to the EU, Britain is a major trading partner and will continue to be so. But not only trade is a connection, there are so many common areas of activities that will be affected, such as the ERASMUS program, common research projects, security questions, air space management, and so on. The British government will be preoccupied with this for the next two years and probably much longer.
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