Sir Ivan Rogers: UK may wait until mid 2020s for an EU trade deal

The former ambassador to the EU had previously warned his colleagues about Brexit negotiatiors' "muddled thinking".

Brits may have to wait until the mid 2020s for a free trade deal with the EU, UK’s former ambassador to Brussels has warned.

Sir Ivan Rogers, who quit abruptly in January after warning of “muddled thinking”, gave evidence to the Brexit select committee.

He told MPs that his Brussels counterparts estimated a free-trade agreement might be negotiated by late 2020, and then it would take two more years to ratify it.

He said: “It may take until the mid 2020s until there is a ratified deep and fully comprehensive free-trade agreement.”

The negotiations could be disrupted by the “rogue” European Parliament, he cautioned, as well as individual member states.

“Canada [the EU-Canada trade deal] not only nearly fell apart on Wallonia, it nearly fell apart on Romania and Bulgaria and visas,” he said.

Member states were calculating what the loss of the UK will mean to their budgets, he added – although many were celebrating the end of Britain’s much-resented budget rebate.

He also thought it unlikely the EU member states would agree to sectoral deals, such as one for financial services, if it meant jeopardising the unity of the EU negotiating position.

In his resignation letter, which was leaked to the press, Rogers told his staff that “contrary to the beliefs of some, free trade does not just happen when it is not thwarted by authorities”and that he hoped they would continue “to challenge ill-founded arguments and muddled thinking”.

Rogers said the comment was about “a generic argument on muddled thinking”, which applied to “the system”. He described how the small organisation he initially headed had been swamped by new arrivals from the newly-created Department for Exiting the EU.

The new recruits were enthusiastic, he said, but “they don’t know an awful lot about the other end”.

The UK needed to understand “we’re up against a class act with the European Commission on negotiating”, he warned.

He said that if the UK reverted to World Trade Organisation rules – the option if it cannot agree a trade deal – it would enter a “legal void”.

“No other major player trades with the EU on pure WTO terms,” he said. “It’s not true that the Americans do, or the Australians, or the Israelis or the Swiss.”

The US has struck agreements “all the time” with the EU, he explained: “A very significant proportion of EU-US trade is actually governed by technical agreements.”

Once the UK leaves the EU, it will be treated as a “third country”, he added. This meant that the UK would need to get on a list to be allowed to export into the EU. Then individual firms would have to be listed, and their products scrutinised.

Rogers revealed he had debated “endlessly” with colleagues about the UK’s relationship with the EU. “The core of the problem is not day one,” he said. “The problem is day two, or day two thousand. What have you just captured your sovereignty and autonomy for?” Simply getting access to the single market would not mean a level playing field with EU companies, he explained.

He said: “The European Union is not a common sense agreement. It’s a legal order.”