Ben Chu and Tamara Kovacevic
BBC Check
Getty images
Five years ago, on January 31, 2020, the United Kingdom left the European Union.
That day, Great Britain broke the political ties it held for 47 years, but remained within the single market and EU customs for an additional 11 months to maintain trade.
Northern Ireland had a separate arrangement.
Brexit was extremely conflictual, both politically and socially, dominating the political debate and with arguments on its impacts which rage for years.
Five years after the day, Great Britain officially left the EU, the BBC Verify examined five important ways that Brexit affected Great Britain.
1)
Economists and analysts generally assess the impact of the leaving the single market and EU customs on January 1, 2021 on the trade in the United Kingdom as having been negative.
This despite the fact that the United Kingdom has negotiated a free trade agreement with the EU and avoided the prices – or taxes – imposed on the import and export of goods.
The negative impact comes from so -called “non -pricing barriers” – long and sometimes complicated from new documents that companies must fill out during import and export to the EU.
There is some disagreement on the negative of the specific impact of Brexit.
Some recent studies suggest that British goods exports are 30% lower than they would have been if we had not left the single market and the customs union.
Some suggest only a reduction of 6%.
We cannot be certain because the results strongly depend on the method chosen by the researchers to measure the “counterfactual”, that is to say what would have happened to British exports if the country had remained in the EU.
One thing we can be reasonably confident is that small British companies seem to be more affected than the largest.
They were less able to deal with the new post-Brexit cross-bureaucracy. This is supported by investigations with small businesses.
It is also clear that the exports of British services – such as advertising and management advice – have done well unexpectedly since 2021.
But the working hypothesis of the Office of Budget Liability (OBR), the official forecuingist independent of the government, is always that long -term Brexit will reduce exports and imports of goods and services by 15% compared to otherwise. He has had an opinion since 2016, especially under the previous government.
And the other OBR working hypothesis is that the drop in trade compared to otherwise will reduce the long -term size of the British economy by around 4% compared to otherwise, equivalent to around 100 billion pounds sterling in today’s money.
The OBR says that he could revise these two hypotheses based on new evidence and studies. The estimated negative economic impact could decrease if the commercial impact considered it less serious. However, there is no evidence, so far, to suggest that this will turn into a positive impact.
After Brexit, the United Kingdom was able to conclude its own trade agreements with other countries.
There have been new trade agreements with Australia and New Zealand and the government has continued new agreements with the United States and India.
However, their impact on the economy is judged by the government’s own official impact assessments to be low compared to the negative impact on the United Kingdom trade.
However, some economists argue that there could still be potential more long-term economic advantages for the United Kingdom, not having to follow EU laws and regulations affecting sectors such as artificial intelligence.
2) Immigration
Immigration was a key theme of the 2016 referendum campaign, focused on freedom of movement within the EU, under which citizens of the United Kingdom and the EU could freely move to visit, study, Work and live.
There has been a great fall in EU immigration and the EU net migration (immigration minus emigration) since the referendum and this accelerated after 2020 due to the end of freedom of movement.
But there has been a strong increase in net migration of the rest of the world since 2020.
A post-Brexit immigration system entered into force in January 2021.
In the context of this system, the EU and the EU citizens must both obtain work visas to work in the United Kingdom (with the exception of Irish citizens, who can always live and work in the kingdom- United without visa).
The two main engines of the increase in immigration not of the EU since 2020 are the work visas (especially health and care) and international students and their dependents.
British universities began to recruit more students abroad, when their financial situation was deteriorating.
The reintroduction of student law abroad to stay and work in Great Britain after obtaining the diploma by the government of Boris Johnson also made the United Kingdom more attractive for international students.
Subsequent conservative governments have reduced the rights of people to work and student visas to provide dependents and these restrictions have been kept by work.
3) Travel
Freedom of movement ended with Brexit, also affecting tourists and business travelers.
British passport holders can no longer use “EU / EEA / CH” tracks at the EU borders.
People can always visit the EU as a tourist for 90 days in a period of 180 days without requiring visa, provided they are at least three months to stay on their passports when they return.
This applies to both British citizens going to the EU and vice versa.
However, a larger change in terms of travel is on the horizon.
In 2025, the EU plans to introduce a new electronic output system (EES) – an automated computer system for the recording of travelers from the EU countries.
This will record the name of the person, the type of travel document, biometric data (fingerprints and captured facial images) and the date and place of entry and exit.
It will replace manual passport stamping. The impact of this is not clear, but some in the travel sector have expressed their fear that it could potentially add to the border queues as people leave the United Kingdom.
The EES was to be introduced in November 2024 but was postponed until 2025, without any new date of implementation.
And six months after the introduction of the EES, the EU says that it will introduce a new European Travel Information and Authorization System (ETIA). British citizens will have to obtain authorization of the elements for travel in 30 European countries.
The ETIAS authorization will cost € 7 (£ 5.90) and will be valid up to three years or until someone’s passport expires, according to the first possibility. If people get a new passport, they must obtain a new Etias travel authorization.
Meanwhile, the United Kingdom introduces its equivalent to ETIA for EU citizens from April 2, 2025 (although Irish citizens are exempt). The British license – to be called an electronic travel authorization (ETA) – will cost £ 16.
Reuters
Vacation manufacturers in the United Kingdom must obtain authorization from Etias to go to the EU
4) Laws
5) Money
The money that the United Kingdom sent to the EU was a controversial theme in the 2016 referendum, in particular the assertion of the leave campaign, the United Kingdom sent 350 million pounds Sterling each week in Brussels.
The contribution of the gross public sector of the United Kingdom to the EU budget in 2019-2020, the last financial year before Brexit, was 18.3 billion pounds Sterling, equivalent to around 352 million pounds sterling per week, according to The treasure.
The United Kingdom continued to pay the EU budget during the transition period, but since December 31, 2020, it has not made these contributions.
However, these contributions to EU budgets have always been partially recycled in the United Kingdom via payments to British farmers under EU current agricultural policy (CAP) and “structural funding” – development subsidies To support skills, employment and training in certain economically disadvantaged regions of the country. These increased up to 5 billion pounds sterling in 2019-20.
Since the end of the transition period, British governments have replaced payments directly by taxpayers’ funds.
The ministers also replaced the EU structural funding subsidies, the previous government rebuilt them as a “shared prosperity in the United Kingdom”.
The United Kingdom also received a negotiated “discount” on its EU budgetary contributions of around 4 billion pounds sterling per year – money that has never left the country,
Thus, the net tax service for the United Kingdom not to pay in the EU budget is closer to 9 billion pounds sterling per year, although this figure is intrinsically uncertain because we do not know what the contribution of the United Kingdom to the EU budget would have been otherwise.
The United Kingdom has also paid the EU as part of the official Brexit withdrawal agreement and its financial regulations. The Treasury indicates that the United Kingdom has paid a net amount of 14.9 billion pounds sterling between 2021 and 2023 and estimated that from 2024, it will have to pay another 6.4 billion pounds sterling, although distributed over several years.
Future payments under the withdrawal regulations are also uncertain in part due to fluctuating exchange rates.
However, there are other ways in which the United Kingdom finances have remained linked to the EU, separated from the EU budget and the withdrawal agreement.
After the entry into force of Brexit, the United Kingdom has also stopped paying in the Horizon regime, which finances pan-European scientific research.
However, Great Britain joined Horizon in 2023 and is planned by the EU to pay an average of around 2.4 billion euros (2 billion pounds sterling) per year for the EU budget for its participation, Although historically the United Kingdom has been a net financial beneficiary of the program due to the cause of the plan because by the plan because the regime because by the United Kingdom was a net financial beneficiary of the regime due to the cause of the plan because by the plan because the regime because the plan of the main part of the subsidies won by scientists based in the United Kingdom.
The future
There are, of course, a large number of other impacts from Brexit that we have not covered here, ranging from territorial fishing rights to Defense Agriculture. And with the workforce in search of a new establishment in EU relations, it is a subject that promises to be a continuous source of debate and analysis for many years to come.
