Tori Ferenc for The Washington Post <caption> Arron Banks, a co-founder of the Leave.EU campaign, photographed at Old Down Estate in Bristol on June 28. </caption> BRISTOL, England — Arron Banks sipped his milky tea and patiently explained to an American journalist that he really doesn’t give a hoot. He didn’t say hoot, of course. He was much more profane. The 52-year-old millionaire insurance mogul — with a passion for off-road car rallies around Kenya, endless gin and tonics, and Brexit politician Nigel Farage — was the main bankroller of the renegade 2016 campaign for Britain to leave the European Union. That campaign made him the largest political donor in British history — and he made history because his side won. Banks and his inner circle now find themselves under the trans-Atlantic microscope, of at least peripheral interest to the Mueller investigation and subjects of inquiries by the British Electoral Commission, the Information Commissioner’s Office and a parliamentary select committee, all investigating Russian interference, fake news, spending irregularities and data misuse in the Brexit campaign. All a witch hunt, Banks says. U.S. congressional investigators are now in possession of thousands of emails and texts generated by Banks and his Brexiteers — documents that were stolen, says Banks; documents that were leaked by whistleblowers, say British journalists. Rep. Adam B. Schiff (Calif.), the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, said he has pressing questions about whether Banks and his associates “served as a conduit of information to and from the Russians on behalf of the Trump campaign.” Bring it on, Banks says. Tori Ferenc for The Washington Post Arron Banks, a co-founder of the Leave.EU campaign, poses for a portrait at Old Down Estate in Bristol, England. Banks spoke with The Washington Post twice this week, once at his insurance company headquarters, which even Banks says looks like the stage set for Ricky Gervais’s British mockumentary “The Office,” and once at Old Down, a sprawling hilltop estate with giant rabbits, wandering llamas and views all the way to Wales, which Banks rents out for weddings and seminars for pensioners on “wealth management.” He lives in a much smaller farmhouse down the road. He yanked off his necktie. He smoked a ciggy. Never mind his cardiologist, who scrawled “LIFESTYLE” on his medical report. The clubby, moneyed, wily, cricket-mad conservative compares his insurgency, favorably, to the Viet Cong. He admires guerrillas, disrupters and President Trump. Banks told The Washington Post he did indeed meet with the Russian ambassador in London at least four times. They got drunk together. They texted. First names. The ambassador tried to hook Banks up with a deal to consolidate Russian gold mines. Later the Russians dangled a diamond deal. “So what?” Banks shrugged. He took a look, he said. He’s a businessman, after all. He has a stake in diamond mines in South Africa and a uranium mine in Niger. But, he insists, he didn’t do any deals with the Russians — no gold, no diamonds. Banks said he would be happy to appear before the U.S. House, if invited. He seems one of those rare individuals who enjoys the theater of appearing before select committees. Pro-Brexit British businessman Arron Banks and his associate Andrew Wigmore ended their testimony before Britain's Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Committee abruptly June 12. When he and his business partner, sidekick and Brexit spokesman Andy Wigmore, were recently grilled by British lawmakers as part of an investigation into fake news, it was must-watch television for political nerds. The duo kicked off the session by asking committee chair Damian Collins if he’d like to recuse himself because he had accepted tickets to a Chelsea soccer match — the club is owned by the Russian billionaire oligarch Roman Abramovich. “Nice try,” said Collins, who gave as good as he got. The session came to a halt when the duo walked out. They were asked to stay for five more minutes to finish, but Banks said they were late for lunch. “You can join us if you want,” Wigmore told lawmakers. Banks has been to Trump Tower with Farage and Wigmore. They were the first foreign delegation to get a meeting with the president-elect in November 2016. Three British men who played major roles in the Brexit vote had several meetings with a Russian Ambassador sometimes days before meeting with Donald Trump's campaign. Wigmore, whom Bank affectionately calls “the worst PR man in London,” said he believes Trump will turn out to be “the greatest president in American history.” Banks nodded his head, yes. During their testimony before the British Parliament’s select committee investing fake news, Wigmore and Banks admitted they enjoyed misleading journalists. Banks called reporters “the cleverest, stupidest people on earth. They are clever, but they want to believe some of this stuff.” The parliament member, Collins, told The Post that Banks “publicly played down his contact with the Russian Embassy and Russian businesspeople. Clearly, there’s a lot more to it.” Collins, who has been investigating the Kremlin’s political interference for the last two years, said the Russian style is to reach out to fellow travelers with shared worldviews — they see a person who is disrupter and try to help that person along. Banks is a student of Trump speeches, which display a kind of genius of repetition, he says, a classic propaganda tool. Emotion. Emotion. Repeat. Repeat. “Crooked Hillary.” “Low-energy Jeb.” “It’s what sticks in people’s minds,” Banks said. Banks said they tried to mimic Trump’s style in the Brexit campaign. Like Trump, Banks is a super tweeter, an online duelist — and a serious troll. For example, he dismisses reporter Carole Cadwalladr of the Observer newspaper — who has published major scoops on Banks, Cambridge Analytica and Russian influence — as the “sad cat lady” who is obsessed with him. Cadwalladr told The Post that Banks was a “laddie” who bobs and weaves but when caught out on a fib says it was all just a lark. “The cat lady stuff is pure misogyny,” she said. “But the ugliness of the current attacks shows they’re running scared.” This sort of stuff seems to goose Banks on. He loves to play head games with journalists and goads Prime Minister Theresa May’s government to deliver the definitive, hard, cleaving Brexit that he says voters voted for. His Russian wife, Katya, a former gymnast and model, showed up in the rose garden with three of their five dogs. She had Russian cousins in tow. “Watch that one, he’s a nipper,” Banks warned of the dachshund. Katya was involved in a complex British-Russian scandal that made the news in 2010 and that never really came to anything — but in Banks style, their big Range Rovers in the drive now sport license plates reading KBII SPY and X MI5 SPY. Few people in the British political class knew who Banks was in 2014. His father ran farms in South Africa. Banks didn’t go to university. Then he said he’d give 100,000 pounds to the U.K. Independence Party (UKIP), the anti-immigrant, Make Britain Great Again party, dismissed by Tories as a bunch of whack jobs and racists who could barely win a seat in Parliament. When William Hague, then leader of the House of Commons, sniffed that he’d never heard of this Arron Banks character, the insurance magnate told Farage to make his donation a million pounds. Combined with Brexit, Banks said he gave $13 million. He insists it was all his money — not Russia’s. “As much as it's divisive — and there's no two ways about it, Brexit and Trump are divisive on an epic scale — I do think sometimes you need characters in history that change the direction of things, and that’s what's happened with Brexit,” Banks told The Post. “Our politicians are struggling to come to grips with it, but is that any surprise?” Banks’s book, written in the aftermath of the historic vote, is a loose diary — a self-serving, funny, self-depreciating, humble-bragging insider’s account. Many paragraphs begin: “Ten G&Ts later …” “Before I got too squiffy …” “Amid the alcohol joviality …” The book’s ghost writer, British political journalist Isabel Oakeshott (whose emails were the ones that went missing), concluded that Banks and Wigmore “were shamelessly used by the Russians” in a “classic Russian fishing expedition.” Tori Ferenc for The Washington Post Arron Banks, right, a co-founder of the Leave.EU campaign, and Andy Wigmore, left, a political operative, pose for a portrait at Old Down Estate in Bristol, England. We asked Banks about that. He called the assessment “harsh” and explained that he and Farage and Wigmore were worried enough about the accusation that they briefed American diplomats on their Russian contacts — so as not to embarrass Trump. Rob Ford, a London academic and co-author of “Revolt on the Right,” described Banks as a polarizing, outspoken character “who seems to quite enjoy the spotlight and the controversy he generates, one of those people who likes to say provocative things and then sit back and watch everyone argue.” Would Banks meet Trump when he comes to England later this month? “We wouldn’t say no,” Banks answered. Wigmore joked, “Tell them we’re not radioactive!” Read more Two years after Brexit vote, British leaders still tied in knots over how to leave Europe Did Brexit campaigners cheat? And if they did, what does that mean? Today’s coverage from Post correspondents around the world Like Washington Post World on Facebook and stay updated on foreign news Read again Arron Banks: The brash British millionaire who backed Brexit, befriended the Russian ambassador and loves Trump : https://ift.tt/2MCNX8F
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Switzerland’s largest listed asset manager has warned staff it is preparing for a “worst case” Brexit as concern grows among international fund managers over the effect of the UK’s exit from the EU. In an email to workers, Zurich-listed Gam said it was making preparations for a hard Brexit— in which the UK would give up access to the single market and customs union. “We are basing our contingency planning on the worst case,” it added. This week Theresa May, UK prime minister, was forced to deny that the government was ignoring companies’ concerns about Brexit. Earlier, foreign secretary Boris Johnson said “ f*** business” when asked in private about the concerns of big industrial manufacturers to the idea of a no-deal exit. Asset managers internationally have ramped up their efforts to respond to the UK’s exit, amid fears about the prospect of a no deal or hard Brexit that could cut them off from investors. A third of more than 40 asset managers contacted by FTfm this month outlined plans to beef up or move parts of their operations to Dublin or Luxembourg, both major fund centres, as part of their preparations for Brexit. “There is definitely a resignation [that it is now] time to just prepare as if [a hard Brexit] is the result,” said Kirsten Lapham, counsel in investment management at Ropes & Gray, the law firm. Peter Mandelson, the former UK cabinet minister and EU trade commissioner, told the Investment Association policy conference this week that the UK faced the prospect of a “blind Brexit”. As a result, business was having to contend with “maximum regulatory uncertainty”. “I personally don’t think we can hammer out a deal with the EU27 in the current Article 50 timescale,” he said. “The government should be seeking an extension of that [March 29] timescale.” In response to queries about its email, Gam said it was “well placed to respond to any potential outcome of Brexit negotiations” because it had operations across the EU, while most of its funds were domiciled in Ireland or Luxembourg. Gam’s largest operation is currently in the UK, where it had 428 employees in 2017. In Switzerland, it had 279 people in 2017, with 143 full-time equivalent staff in the rest of Europe. The company’s Mifid licence, which sets out how investment services can be provided across the EU, is also based in the UK, and Gam said it was considering this licence as part of its Brexit planning. In the event of a hard Brexit, Mifid licences may no longer be valid, leaving asset managers unable to access or service European clients. “We are closely monitoring Brexit negotiations and activities and developing contingency plans for all scenarios,” the company said. “We believe that keeping all our options open for as long as possible, avoiding unnecessary disruption and only making changes if required is the appropriate approach.” Other asset managers, including MFS, the $492bn US fund group, have been preparing for the possibility of a hard Brexit. Dave Mace, who runs the Luxembourg branch of MFS, said: “There may be a transition deal later this year, which could buy the industry more time but we mustn’t become complacent.” Julie Patterson, head of asset management regulatory change at KPMG, the consultancy, said expanding fund ranges or setting up management companies in places like Dublin and Luxembourg was an expensive exercise. “You’ve got to double up, have extra people, an extra entity, you’ve just got more costs. That’s not a happy thought for any chief executive.” Read again Swiss fund group GAM warns staff of 'worst case' Brexit : https://ift.tt/2lH7Dg5Near Swindon in the south-west of England, on a site where Spitfires were made in wartime, Honda operates two cavernous warehouses that Brexit could overwhelm. Although the combined buildings dwarf the assembly plant next door, they still only store enough kit to keep production of the Honda Civic rolling for 36 hours. This is the Japanese carmaker’s breathing space, and after a hard Brexit it might need to be bigger — much, much bigger. Proud managers describe 2m components “flowing like water” to the factory line every working day. Some orders from EU suppliers arrive within five to 24 hours; others, such as customised car seats, are summoned from local suppliers just 75 minutes before use. Not a minute is wasted. Receive 4 weeks of unlimited digital access to the Financial Times for just $1. Honda now fears that the border checks that could be introduced as a result of Brexit will clog up the process. If Britain were to leave the customs union, Honda estimates European parts will take a minimum of two to three days to reach the plant, and possibly as long as nine days. Delivery times of finished cars may be just as unpredictable. To a car industry famed for its clockwork tempo, the potential delays pose an existential challenge. A warehouse capable of holding nine days’ worth of Honda stock would need to be roughly 300,000 sq m — one of the largest buildings on earth. Its floorspace would be equivalent to 42 football pitches, almost three times Amazon’s main US distribution centre. And its cost to operate would be as eye-catching as its proportions. ___________________________________________________________________________________________ BMW UK plants: Mini, Oxford (4,000 staff); Rolls-Royce, Goodwood (1,700); engines, Hams Hall, Birmingham (800); bodywork, Swindon (850) Makes: Minis, all Rolls-Royce model HONDA UK plants: Cars and engines, Swindon (4,000 staff) Makes: Civic NISSAN UK plant: Cars and engines, Sunderland (7,000 employees) Makes: Qashqai, Leaf, Juke ___________________________________________________________________________________________ Such are the surreal options facing Honda — and manufacturers across a number of industries — which want to continue production in Brexit Britain. Honda has had to deal with earthquakes in Japan and floods in Thailand. Adverse swings in currency markets have walloped profit margins. But these are nothing compared to what a clean break with the EU may bring. “The breadth of what we are dealing with is unprecedented in terms of its total impact,” says Ian Howells, senior vice-president of Honda Europe. “Even though there is huge uncertainty around foreign exchange, our Japanese colleagues know how to manage that,” he added. “At the moment they don’t understand how to manage Brexit. It is a whole load of moving parts and nobody’s ever sure exactly how those parts are going to reconnect, disconnect or whatever.” Other carmakers, such as BMW, are facing similarly unforgiving choices. Almost 90 per cent of the parts assembled in the German group’s four British factories come from mainland Europe. “We do our best to maintain business continuity. We don’t want to give up our UK plants,” says Stephan Freismuth, a former customs officer who is now a director of BMW’s customs operations. “We always said we can do our best and prepare everything, but if in the end the supply chain will have a stop at the border, then we cannot produce our products in the UK.” With nine months left before Britain’s exit and Westminster still undecided on the direction Brexit should take, the warnings are becoming increasingly blunt, and despairing. Airbus, BMW, Honda — blue-chip manufacturers in Britain are raising the alarm. The uncertainty has already hit spending in the industry, with investment in the first six months year of £347m, roughly half the amount spent in the same six months a year earlier, according to figures published on Tuesday by the Society of Motor Manufacturers are Traders. Voicing the frustration of some in government, Jeremy Hunt, UK health secretary, complained that companies such as Airbus were making “totally inappropriate” threats that “weaken our negotiating position”. Jacob Rees-Mogg, the pro-Brexit Conservative MP, says BMW is probably afraid of facing tariffs on its profitable exports to the UK. “You have to see what they are saying is driven by fear of losing access to our market, not the other way around,” he says. “The real issue is whether the UK remains an efficient base to manufacture — cost-competitive and value for money for customers.” The warnings are not only over the implications of a no-deal exit in 2019, the most severe Brexit scenario. Manufacturers wonder whether their businesses will remain viable if the UK government achieves what it wants: an orderly withdrawal from the customs union, sometime in the 2020s. Investment decisions are looming. “It is the end of the business model,” says one senior EU diplomat handling Brexit who has met car executives laying out the dire consequences for their industry. “It is nuts.” Swindon’s site has long been a test bed for manufacturing experiments. At a secret Vickers factory during the second world war, “lean” methods were used to maximise Spitfire production at a time of scarcity: it was one of the oldest of the “just-in-time” systems that now dominate modern manufacturing. In the late 1970s, Swindon witnessed the first partnership between eastern and western automakers. Workers at the ailing British Leyland were astounded to find Honda Ballade assembly packages arrive from Japan that had no missing parts, and could actually fit together. The spirit of “kanban” — Japanese lean manufacturing — had arrived on British shores. Years later, Japanese cars were some of the first made in Britain to use a truly pan-European supplier base. Former prime minister Margaret Thatcher wooed Japanese carmakers to a Britain that “provides access to the whole European Community”. Honda Accords first rolled off the Swindon assembly line in 1992, just as the single market was about to be launched. Honda exports about half its Swindon-made cars to the US — giving it just the kind of global outlook championed by Brexiters. “There is some opportunity,” says Justin Benson, head of UK automotive at KPMG. A weaker pound, he adds, could improve competitiveness and “see an upside for exports”. However, Brexit has shaken the foundations of this partnership. Through unusually frank public interventions, Japanese diplomats have made their concern plain. The reality for Honda is that just 25 per cent of the Civic model is now “true UK content”. Nissan is in a similar position: only 15 per cent of its components are paid for in sterling. Put simply, the carmakers would never have developed these plant networks if they knew Britain planned to leave the EU’s customs union or single market. “I don’t think it’s feasible for the carmakers to carry on running the supply chains they currently do if that happens,” says Tim Lawrence, global head of manufacturing at the PA Consulting group. “It’s just not going to work.” Honda is one of the first carmakers to explain, in detail, the delays it expects for importing parts and exporting cars if the UK leaves the customs union. Based on experience of trading with the US, it estimates UK export clearance will take an extra 24 hours on top of the five to 24-hour order-to-destination journey within the EU today. In addition, entry clearance into the EU may take a further 24-36 hours if current US arrangements are any guide. It has little hope that technological fixes will make a big difference. The biggest delay of all would come from being forced on to the seas. At present about 75 per cent of Honda parts and cars move through the Channel tunnel rail link, which is likely to become a bottleneck in a world of border checks. The Eurotunnel has room for only 200 trucks at the UK side, and 900 on the continent. The sheer volume of small consignments makes handling paperwork or checks hard. Stoppages make for large queues and there is little chance to make up for delays. Honda thinks congestion may force it to use sea routes, which are more intermittent, require bigger deliveries and add three to six days of delay — if ports have the infrastructure and space to cope with the extra demand. “Shipping takes a long time,” says Mr.Howells. “That’s what we are facing.” Mr.Freismuth of BMW also highlighted the “massive problem” physical checks would cause at Eurotunnel. “Without having a frictionless border, it will be a problem and there will be production stops at UK plants,” he said. Mr.Rees-Mogg plays down the impact of more trade having to travel by sea. “Just look at what goes through Southampton regularly. Most goods are cleared within seconds, only 6 per cent of goods take more than a minute to clear,” he says. “Once we have left the EU we will not be obliged to follow the EU bureaucracy. We can make it more streamlined.” Theresa May’s stated plan is to leave the single market and customs union. But the prime minister’s team seem to have devoted a lot more energy into finding ways to soften the exit. This includes pushing for a standstill transition to 2021, and potentially a “temporary customs partnership” lasting for at least a year longer. In Whitehall, senior officials imagine those transitional measures in practice turning into a final arrangement, where Britain would in effect remain in a customs and goods area with the EU. “Isn’t it obvious?” asks one British official. Yet for business, such hints about minimal actual changes are not enough to work with given all the uncertainties. ___________________________________________________________________________________________ 75% Percentage of Honda components which arrive via the Channel tunnel. If there is disruption the tunnel cannot recover quickly 60,000 Estimated number of extra customs declarations that would be needed in the event of a hard Brexit £2.1m Extra costs for new IT systems and staffing to cope with Honda’s additional customs declarations, according to a Customs and Excise estimate ___________________________________________________________________________________________ As a result, manufacturers are adjusting where they can. BMW is beginning to unpick supply chains, shifting production of engines destined for Germany from its plant at Hams Hall near Birmingham. Mr.Freismuth says it is “preparing for a cliff-edge scenario in March 2019 based on the information we have”. Additional distribution centres are also planned to house more parts, but it “just won’t be possible to store everything”, he says. “You just couldn’t build enough warehouses.” Honda has fewer options. Swindon is its global production centre for five-door Civics — and Honda’s only car factory in Europe. Mr.Howells says Honda’s operations “are predicated on the customs union”, but says it could adapt to a “more inefficient model” outside. But again the expectation gap between politics and business seems considerable. Honda expects it would need to handle 60,000 additional customs declarations, requiring a new IT system and additional staff. HM Revenue & Customs says this would cost Honda £2.1m a year in form-filling alone — a cost that does not include the hit to productivity from a more unwieldy supply chain. Crucially it also assumes Honda has enough time to adjust. Mr.Howells says he needs at least 18 months to adapt his systems to “the brave new world” outside a customs union. Yet this uncertainty over regulations could last for years after Brexit negotiations end. Even with the conclusion of a UK-EU trade deal, which EU officials say will be signed in 2021 at the very earliest, many questions will remain outstanding. No trade agreement would include the kind of detail Honda needs on database fields, IT systems, form requirements or the application of measures to facilitate trade. Honda could only begin to fully adapt to the new reality when the UK details its implementation plans, with legislation and technical standards. The process, in other words, stretches into the late 2020s. “We can only go as fast as [government] can go,” said Mr.Howells. Lower down the supply chain, the adaptation challenge will be even greater. When BMW talked to its network of 1,600 suppliers in Europe that sell into its UK plants, it found only half were prepared for customs checks. Among its UK suppliers that are exporters, the situation was even worse — only a third had customs procedures in place, and many of those were using customs brokers that charge £40 per consignment. “We had to invite all our suppliers who are not well prepared for Brexit, and teach them the basics of customs,” says Mr.Freismuth. These are wrenching changes that no company would embark on unless absolutely necessary — the kind of certainty that Britain’s Brexit debate has yet to deliver. “What is it that I am dealing with? We have very regular meetings internally on Brexit and I don’t think we’ve given the same reports twice,” says Mr.Howells. “With foreign currency you can react, you can see what the problem is and you can react to it. With Brexit we just can’t react. We can scenario, we can contingently plan, but we can’t then react because we don’t know.” ___________________________________________________________________________________________ 2m Number of components coming into the factory production line in Swindon every day 10,000 Number of containers handled by Honda’s logistics and materials division per shift 25% Percentage of a Honda Civic’s components which come solely from the UK ___________________________________________________________________________________________ This uncertainty has carried a price in investment. Honda will soon be reviewing the plans for its next Civic model, which is due around 2021. In theory, it would be glad to source more parts from within the UK and Brexit provides an opportunity to do just that. But it would take years — perhaps even a decade — to shift more supply to the UK, even if the parts companies were willing. Mr.Howells warns the UK supply base is “shallow” and more orders from Britain alone may not be a big enough incentive to deepen it. Other UK suppliers are already feeling the pinch. Andrew Varga, who runs specialist valves maker Seetru, noticed a 5-10 per cent drop in orders from the EU recently, even as other business grew. Longstanding EU customers sought to protect their supply chains against a Brexit shock, or a change in origin requirements. “They’ve said they don’t want to talk to us any more, no new products, nothing,” Mr.Varga says, staring out of a window. “These manufacturers tend to have long product life-cycles, so once you’re in a product, it’s difficult for them to engineer you out, but then, as the next model comes in, you don’t go into the next model,” he adds. “So, it’s a slow death process. That’s what it is.” More from the Financial Times: Brexit triggers a great car parts race for UK auto industry EU reprimands UK over pace of Brexit talks beset by ‘huge differences’ UK consumer confidence improvement snaps as pessimism builds Russians Offered Business Deals to Brexitâs Biggest BackerLONDON â Arron Banks, a British financier who bankrolled the campaign for Britain to leave the European Union, has long bragged about his âboozy six-hour lunchâ with the Russian ambassador eight months before the vote. Some also wondered about Mr. Banksâs Russian-born wife and their custom license plate, X MI5 SPY, after the British intelligence agency, MI5. But Mr. Banks always laughed off questions about his ties to the Kremlin. Now, a leaked record of some of Mr. Banksâs emails suggest that he and his closest adviser had a more engaged relationship with Russian diplomats than he has disclosed. While Mr. Banks was spending more than eight million British pounds to promote a break with the European Union â an outcome the Russians eagerly hoped for â his contacts at the Russian Embassy in London were opening the door to at least three potentially lucrative investment opportunities in Russian-owned gold or diamond mines. One of Mr. Banksâs business partners, and a fellow backer of Britainâs exit from the European Union, or Brexit, took the Russians up on at least one of the deals. The extent of these business discussions, which have not been previously reported, raise new questions about whether the Kremlin sought to reward critical figures in the Brexit campaign. Much as in Washington, where investigations are underway into the possibility that Donald J. Trumpâs campaign may have cooperated with the Russians, Britain is now grappling with whether Moscow tried to use its close ties with any British citizens to promote Brexit. In Washington, the investigators for the special prosecutor, Robert S. Mueller III, and Democrats on the House Intelligence Committee have also obtained records of Mr. Banksâs communications, including some with Russian diplomats and about Russian business deals. And they have taken a special interest in close ties Mr. Banks and other Brexit leaders built to the Trump campaign. On Nov. 12, 2016, Mr. Banks met President-elect Trump in Trump Tower. Upon his return to London, Mr. Banks had another lunch with the Russian ambassador where they discussed the Trump visit. âFrom what weâve seen, the parallels between the Russian intervention in Brexit and the Russian intervention in the Trump campaign appear to be extraordinary,â said Representative Adam B. Schiff of California, the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee. âThe Russians were apparently dangling gold mines and diamond mines and financial incentives behind one of the largest backers of Brexit,â he added. Earlier this month, Mr. Banks testified before a committee of Parliament in part to answer questions about his Russian ties. He acknowledged having had three meetings â âtwo lunches and a cup of tea,â as he later said in interviews â with the Russian ambassador, Alexander V. Yakovenko, rather than just the famous boozy lunch. He also acknowledged reports that the ambassador had invited him to invest in the consolidation of six Russian gold mines, an offer he said he ultimately declined. But in his testimony, Mr. Banks did not mention the two other potentially lucrative opportunities detailed in the broader record of his electronic communications. One involved a state-controlled Russian diamond mining giant, Alrosa. The other involved a Russian businessman â described in an email to Mr. Banks as âa mini oligarchâ â and a gold mine in Conakry, Guinea. In an interview on Friday, Mr. Banks acknowledged that these other business deals were proposed to him, but he said that he never acted on them. He denied any wrongdoing, noting that his opposition to the European Union long predated his meeting with the Russian ambassador. He argued that any business discussions that emerged from those meetings were insignificant because he had never âdone any Russian deals,â so âafter the wholesale theft of my emails, there is still no smoking gun there.â But Damian Collins, who is chairman of the parliamentary committee investigating the potential Russian use of disinformation to influence the Brexit vote, said he had seen a record of the messages about the potential Russian mining investments and questioned Russian intentions toward Mr. Banks. âThe question is, Why would the Russians do this for Banks?â Mr. Collins asked in an interview. âWhat it looks like is that Russia decided he was someone they wanted to do business with and they wanted to see prosper and succeed â and Banks, alongside that, wanted to hide the extent of his contacts with the Russians.â With no college degree, Mr. Banks first became wealthy by starting insurance companies that sold policies to motorcycle riders and van drivers. He now owns a complicated network of insurance and finance enterprises as well as a few diamond mines in South Africa, where his father operated sugar plantations. He first rose in prominence in Britain through his role in the campaign to leave the European Union, and he has published a campaign memoir, âThe Bad Boys of Brexit.â Some of his emails were first leaked earlier this month to the British press. But the broader record of his messages, described this week to The New York Times by several people who had read them, revealed the new disclosures about Mr. Banksâs more extensive Russian business dealings. In the Friday interview, Mr. Banks eventually admitted to a fourth meeting with the Russian ambassador, though he described the earlier account he gave to Parliament of two lunches and a cup of tea as ârelatively accurate.â He said his emails might have created the impression of more extensive contacts because of the many exchanges that his media adviser, Andrew Wigmore, had conducted with Russian diplomats to set up meetings, or about attending embassy events. âI have not denied that we had a friendly relationshipâ with the ambassador, Mr. Banks said. He added: âIt is completely natural that a diplomat would put you in touch with another businessman. That is how trade works.â The first contacts between Mr. Banks and the Russian Embassy came in September 2015, during a conference for the pro-Brexit United Kingdom Independent Party, or UKIP. He and Mr. Wigmore met a Russian diplomat, Alexander Udod, who was later among a list of 23 suspected spies expelled from Britain after the recent poisoning of a former Russia spy, Sergei V. Skripal, on British soil. In the interview, Mr. Banks said he and Mr. Wigmore had asked Mr. Udod if they could meet the ambassador, âbecause we thought it would be interesting.â At the first meeting with the ambassador, over lunch, Mr. Banks recalled in his memoir, the ambassador served him a special bottle of vodka that he claimed was made for Stalin. In the interview, Mr. Banks said that at the lunch, he had volunteered that he owned diamond mines in South Africa. The ambassador then invited him for another meeting later that month to introduce him to a Russian businessman who was offering a chance to invest in a proposed consolidation of six Russian gold mines. âI am very bullish on gold so keen to have a look,â Mr. Banks wrote afterward in an email to the Russian businessman, Siman Povarenkin. Mr. Banks was interested enough that he sought the advice of Nick van den Brul, an investment banker familiar with Russian gold and diamond mines. In January 2016, Mr. Banks wrote Mr. van der Brul an email about âthe gold play.â âI intend to pop in and see the ambassador as well,â Mr. Banks wrote. He sent a copy of the email to Mr. Udod, the diplomat later expelled for spying. Mr. Banks said he never participated in that gold deal. But it appears that Mr. Povarenkin offered him a different Russian opportunity â with the diamond company Alrosa. The Russian government, the largest shareholder in the company, was preparing to sell off a 10 percent stake. On Jan. 16, 2016, an investment adviser working for Mr. Banks wrote Mr. Povarenkin that Mr. Banksâs team had ânot forgotten about your Alrosa project,â according to people who have reviewed records of the emails. A few days later, Mr. van den Brul, the same investment banker that Mr. Banks had consulted to discuss the gold deal, emailed him separately about the diamond opportunity. In interviews earlier this week, Mr. Banks initially said he knew nothing about the Alrosa project. Then he later said he remembered hearing about it from the investment banker but did not pursue it. His friend, business partner and fellow Brexit backer, James Mellon, did participate. Mr. Mellon, a prominent investor based in the Isle of Man, is a partner with Mr. Banks in a financial institution on the island. Mr. Mellon has made hundreds of millions of dollars investing in Russia since the fall of the Soviet Union, often alongside businessmen close to President Vladimir V. Putin. Mr. Mellon had introduced Mr. Banks to Nigel Farage, a strident crusader against the European Union who became the chief beneficiary of Mr. Banksâs contributions during the Brexit campaign. Three weeks after the 2016 Brexit vote, the Russian government sold the Alrosa stake in a private offering to a restricted group of investors. The shares were sold at a discount to the market price at a time when the value of both the stock and diamonds were rising. Mr. Mellonâs fund management company, Charlemagne Capital, was among a restricted number of investors who were allowed to participate. Denham Eke, a representative for Mr. Mellon, said that Mr. Mellon had stepped out of day-to-day management of Charlemagne, and that any investment decisions were made by a formal committee. He added that Mr. Mellonâs business investments in Russia were unrelated to his opposition to the European Union or to Mr. Banks. The third Russian investment opportunity surfaced in April 2016, as the Brexit campaign was heating up. Another investment banker with connections in Russia wrote to Mr. Banks about the possible sale of a gold mine in Conakry, Guinea. The owner was a Russian âmini-oligarchâ who âshares your passion for the yellow metal,â the banker wrote, according to people who have reviewed a record of the email. In the Friday interview, Mr. Banks initially said that he had no memory of such a discussion but later called back to acknowledge a meeting on May 10, 2016, that appears to have included a discussion of the Guinean mine. Mr. Banks said he did not invest in that mine either. The Brexit vote took place a little more than a month later, on June 23, 2016. In August, Mr. Banks had lunch with the Russian ambassador and discussed the Trump campaign. At their lunch after Mr. Trumpâs victory in November, the two men discussed what role Jeff Sessions, then a senator, might play in the cabinet, according to people who have reviewed the records of his emails. Mr. Banks, though, said he doubted that the Russians had cultivated him for reasons other than routine trade promotion. âThe idea that things were dangled as some sort of carrots for me to be involved with the Russians is very far-fetched,â he said. âI wonder what the Russians wanted from me?â Related CoverageIn Less Than a Minute, E.U. Tells Britain to Get âRealisticâ on BrexitBRUSSELS â Divided over their other pressing problems, European Union leaders on Friday took less than a minute to unite over a warning to Britainâs prime minister, Theresa May, that she risks a disorderly and disruptive British exit from the bloc unless she breaks months of political deadlock in London and makes ârealisticâ proposals. With Britain planning to end more than four decades of European integration in March, crucial questions remain unresolved. Mrs. Mayâs divided cabinet is constraining her power to negotiate, and the thought is dawning in some capitals that Britain might end up, accidentally, leaving the bloc without any deal at all, which most experts say would be an unmitigated disaster. After a marathon negotiation on migration that began Thursday and went well into Friday morning, the leaders dispensed with the British withdrawal, known as Brexit, in less than 60 seconds, according to the Maltese prime minister, Joseph Muscat â though they devoted longer to venting their frustration at the glacial pace of progress.
Donald Tusk, president of the European Council, said it was âthe last call to lay the cards on the table.â Michel Barnier, the European Unionâs chief Brexit negotiator, noted that âhuge and serious divergences remain,â warned that time was short and appealed for Mrs. May to put forward âworkable and realistic proposalsâ for the future. That was a reference to the next, crucial move in Brexit: Mrs. Mayâs attempt, scheduled for next week, to win support from her bitterly divided cabinet for a long-awaited white paper on future relations with the bloc. In the meantime, the 27 nations increased the pressure on her, urging member countries to step up preparations forâall outcomesâ â code for no Brexit deal â and noting there had been âno substantial progressâ over backstop plans to prevent the reintroduction of frontier controls between Northern Ireland, which is part of the United Kingdom, and Ireland, which will remain in the European Union. Mrs. May, who had left by the time the 27 leaders discussed Brexit, needs an agreement on Ireland to avoid a disorderly exit â the âcliff edgeâ departure and sudden change in trade rules so feared by many businesses. On Thursday night she sought to turn the tables on the European Union, arguing that applying its strict rules on the treatment of nonmembers could restrict Britainâs ability to share information on potential terrorists and other criminals, and therefore compromise the security of Europeans. She has made the same argument for differential treatment on a range of issues, but on security, Britain has much to offer the other 27 nations. So her plea for more flexibility seemed to be aimed at national leaders and over the heads of the European negotiators. But everyone acknowledges that the next move needs to come from London. Though Mrs. May is edging, crablike, toward a Brexit that retains close economic ties to the bloc, deep divisions within her cabinet have paralyzed decision-making in London and put much of the negotiation on ice. Big multinational companies have recently increased the pressure on Mrs. May, saying that they need more certainty, with firms including Airbus and BMW sounding the alarm. In that business leaders have been reluctant to make public statements on Brexit for fear of upsetting the government and pro-Brexit voters, the warnings seem to reflect a rising fear of a chaotic exit. Mrs. Mayâs party is divided between pragmatists who want to keep many economic links to Europe â Britainâs biggest trade partner â and pro-Brexit purists who prefer a clean break, so Mrs. May has spent months adjudicating between rival factions at home. Next Friday she plans to hold a meeting at Chequers, her country retreat, which has been billed as a showdown of sorts, as many previous get-togethers over Brexit have been portrayed, only to disappoint those hoping for clarity. Mrs. May has invited the whole cabinet, hoping this will tilt the political balance away from hard-liners like her foreign secretary, Boris Johnson, who despite his well-known ambitions to succeed Mrs. May, has so far drawn back from resigning, a step that could destabilize her already weakened leadership. Analysts believe that Mrs. Mayâs emerging Brexit plans might keep Britain tied to European rules and technical standards for most goods, while providing less access to continental Europeâs market for British financial services companies. Economically that might be a bad deal for Britain, which is heavily reliant on services, but it could allow big multinational companies to maintain existing supply chains vital for manufacturers such as automakers. It could also permit Britain to strike trade deals for the financial sector in other parts of the world â partially meeting the demands of Brexit supporters. Britain would hope for a big concession from the European Union through a relaxation of rules guaranteeing the free movement of workers, even though the blocâs leaders have dismissed the idea as delusional. But some analysts think a deal could be made economically advantageous enough to continental Europeans to make it politically viable, particularly given that Britain would be giving up any say in shaping many rules that it would choose to obey. Mrs. Mayâs main task is to secure approval for an outline for the future that might permit something like this â without causing a political crisis at home. Yet, if the document is too vague, it risks falling flat in Brussels. In London the infighting is underway as the factions sense the beginning of an endgame. On Thursday, Mrs. Mayâs former chief aide Nick Timothy warned that she was on course to deliver the âvery worstâ type of Brexit, urging her to âtoughen up.â Mr. Timothy is an ardent Brexit supporter and, as a principal aide to the prime minister, was one of the main architects of her negotiating strategy. He was jettisoned after her disastrous election campaign last year. She has tried to reassure business that she has negotiated a standstill transition period that is scheduled to start in March next year during which Britain will stay tied to European rules until the end of 2020. But even that is conditional on a wider deal that includes a backstop plan to prevent the imposition of a hard border in Ireland. Mrs. Mayâs proposals on this have proved difficult for Brexit supporters who see this as a trap through which the temporary measures gradually take on permanence. That has led to a standoff, as on so many other issues. Related Coverage"The last call"... "we cannot wait any more"... "huge and serious" gaps. European leaders can repeat the same message, louder and louder. But this EU summit's instructions to Theresa May may as well have been shouted into an empty cupboard. Because they know what she knows - that the past 24 hours of Brexit conversations are not nearly as important as the next seven days of discussions at home between Number 10 and the rest of the government. And after more than two years, this time next week ministers should be nearing the conclusion of their country retreat at Chequers. It's there that the prime minister hopes to find resolution in her team on a more detailed offer to the rest of the EU - easing, if not removing, all the contradictions in the Tories' positions. Any pretence that the cabinet agrees is long gone. The government's promised publication of their choices within days, which if comprehensive and detailed as promised, will mark a big step forward, and in theory allow progress towards a final deal. But if the eventual Brexit white paper is flimsy - still a list of tentative options - patience in Brussels may finally run out. Sources suggest that if there is no clarity from the UK next week, all that will be available to Britain is a simple free trade deal. For many months, Theresa May has held the ring while inside her party brawls over Brexit have raged. If she can't end the fight, by picking a winning side or forcing a persuasive compromise, the EU may call time. In the next seven days the prime minister has hurdles she must clear to secure her future. Read again All eyes now on Cabinet Brexit decision : https://ift.tt/2NcgJOf
By
Max Colchester and
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Brexit was meant to be a crippling blow to London’s position as the financial capital of Europe. With eight months to go before the U.K. is set to leave the European Union, the British capital’s role remains mostly undiminished, and no single other European city is close to claiming its crown. One key measure: what was expected to be a flood of bankers out of London to continental Europe has turned out to be a trickle. And the ones that are leaving are divided widely among rival cities such as Frankfurt, Paris, Dublin, Milan and Amsterdam. The result isn’t the immediate challenge to London that was anticipated. The amount of international lending channeled through U.K.-based banks increased between the June 2016 Brexit vote and the end of 2017, according to the Bank for International Settlements. British exports of financial services also continued to rise, according to Coriolis Technologies, which tracks this data. “I would have thought that there would have been a worse outcome by now,” Goldman Sachs Group Inc. Chief Executive Lloyd Blankfein said earlier this year. Exiting the EU could, depending on the outcome of negotiations between the U.K. and Brussels, leave bankers in London unable to sell products seamlessly across the trading bloc’s 28 nations. But a transition agreement should keep the U.K.’s access to the EU until the end of 2020. So after making detailed fallback plans, banks are sitting on their hands. “The number of bank staff moves out of London so far has been much lower than expected by many,” says Oliver Wagner, managing director of the Association of Foreign Banks in Germany, where Frankfurt was supposed to be a major beneficiary of Brexit. A forecast of the number of British finance jobs set to disappear by March 2019, when the U.K. leaves the EU, was recently reduced to 5,000 from 10,000 by the Bank of England. That’s about 1% of the people who work in financial services in London. Global financial centers such as London, New York and Hong Kong, maintain their pre-eminence based on overwhelming concentrations of capital and skilled finance workers. Brexit presents an opportunity for other European capitals to pry some of that expertise away. So far, even with banks claiming they are prepared to weather the severest form of Brexit, London has only lost its standing in dribs and drabs. This summer around a dozen of Goldman Sachs’ French fixed income sales team—who are based in London—will head to Paris to deal with clients from the French capital. Bank of America Corp. on Tuesday kicked off its Brexit reshuffle announcing that three senior bankers would move to Paris next year, where the bank is renovating an art deco post office to house its staff. JP Morgan Chase & Co. had warned that a quarter of the 16,000 people it employs Britain could see their jobs go because of Brexit. Currently it plans to move between 300 and 400 jobs. Given the uncertainty, banks aim to move as few jobs as possible and hope they can leave it at that. That means relocating a handful of bigwig executives, trying to send London-based European salespeople back to home countries and hiring support staff locally in Europe. The thinking is that a lot of operations staff can, for the moment, stay put in the U.K. Much about the U.K.’s future relationship with the EU remains unknown. And for some, the banks are moving too slowly. The European Banking Authority has warned that banks aren’t ready if the Brexit talks collapsed and the U.K. found itself suddenly frozen out of the EU. That could throw up problems ranging from the invalidation of some contracts to increasing the cost of clearing trades. “Financial stability should not be put at risk because financial institutions are trying to avoid costs,” the EBA said. European regulators are also turning the screws. Newsletter Sign-up
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The EU is considering forcing big banks based in the U.K. to set up subsidiaries in the bloc. In the long term that might encourage international lenders to move headquarters out of London and into the EU for cost reasons. London may become the outpost of a bank’s European hub. Investment banks are hoping that the European Central Bank allows them to continue to flip trades out of their EU hubs back into London, which would require less transfer of capital from the city to the continent. But ECB officials have been adamant they want subsidiaries in the EU that have enough capital and management in place to withstand shocks independently. Banks also hope to outsource back-office work to their British subsidiaries. This is much cheaper than creating a big new stand-alone banking operation in the EU. ECB officials have said they are against the idea but bankers are betting on concessions in the short term. “Much of this is still open for question,” says John Liver, a partner at Ernst & Young. Write to Max Colchester at [email protected] and Patricia Kowsmann at [email protected] The future of the border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland is proving to be a massive challenge in the Brexit negotiations, and talk of "no deal" is making a lot of people nervous. But it's not just in the UK that this matters, because the Republic of Ireland depends on trade with the United Kingdom for its economic well-being. There's been a lot of talk about north-south trade across the border with Northern Ireland, and the need to avoid any border checks. But in purely economic terms, east-west trade across the Irish Sea between Ireland and Great Britain is far more important. The vast majority of freight traffic leaving the Republic of Ireland is exported from Dublin, with the busiest routes to ports such as Liverpool and Holyhead. Counting containersHow much trade are we talking about? One way of measuring it is to look at the data on roll-on roll-off freight containers, many of them carrying food and other retail items that people rely on every day. Roll-on, roll-off (or Ro-Ro) refers to containers transported on lorries or trailers, while load-on, load-off (or Lo-Lo) refers to containers that are loaded on to ships by cranes. (And yes, Rolos are still made of chocolate.) Ro-Ro transport is important for produce that needs to get to market quickly, or for just-in-time manufacturing processes that rely on hourly deliveries of components. Ireland's Central Statistics Office released figures on 29 June, which show that in 2017 553,630 loaded Ro-Ro freight containers, on lorries or trailers, were shipped from Ireland to the rest of the world. The vast majority were heading for other ports in the EU. Only a tiny number - 24 - went to ports elsewhere. About 85% of Ireland's total EU freight trade goes via British ports - 475,925 containers last year. We can break that number down a bit further. The Irish Freight Transport Association estimates that the final destination of roughly 60% of the 475,925 freight containers shipped to Britain is Britain itself. That means the other 40% - roughly 190,000 per year - is destined for elsewhere in the EU, transiting across Britain via ports such as Dover or Hull, or via the Channel Tunnel. No-one knows the exact number, although Ireland's Department of Transport has commissioned in-depth research that should be released shortly. But one thing is clear: any kind of breakdown or problem posed by the failure to reach a Brexit agreement could have a huge impact, not just on Ireland's trade with the UK, but also on Ireland's trade with the rest of the EU. Don't forget that in this article we've just looked at Irish exports. Ireland is equally dependent on trade with the UK for its imports. New ferriesIreland currently sends lots of its exports to other countries via Britain because it is quicker than doing the whole journey by sea. Could Ireland try to cut out the so-called British land bridge and trade more directly with the rest of the EU? Some steps are already being taken in that direction. One Luxembourg-based shipping company, CLdN, has just introduced two huge new Ro-Ro freight ferries on the direct sea route from Dublin to the Dutch port of Rotterdam, and to Zeebrugge in Belgium. The new ferries are the largest short-sea Ro-Ro vessels (ones that do not cross oceans) in the world, and can carry 650 cargo units on each voyage. When one of them, the MV Celine, was christened in Dublin in April, the chief executive of Dublin Port Company, Eamonn O'Reilly, said: "The addition of new ships and sailings shows the shipping sector's resilience and ability to adapt to changing customer needs, particularly in response to Brexit." "We expect MV Celine will mark the beginning of additional services to continental Europe from Dublin port over the coming years." Extra freight capacity is already being phased in on ferry routes between Dublin and Cherbourg, in France, as well as between Cork and Santander, in Spain. But to give some idea of the extent to which Ireland relies on the British land bridge, statistics from the Port of Dublin show that last year it sent 31,875 loaded Ro-Ro containers to Belgium and Holland, while it sent 188,902 containers to Holyhead alone. So while some contingency plans are already being made, it's not nearly enough to replace the trade that currently goes to or through Britain. And that is a reminder that Ireland needs a good Brexit deal almost as much as the UK does. Read again Reality Check: The Brexit challenge for Irish trade : https://ift.tt/2N9c8fT"Huge and serious" differences remain between the UK and EU in Brexit talks, the EU's chief negotiator has warned. Michel Barnier invited UK negotiators back to Brussels next Monday, warning: "The time is very short." Talks continue over the terms of the UK's withdrawal from the EU in March next year. What happens to the Irish border remains a sticking point. The UK says agreement on vital security co-operation after Brexit is being blocked by EU negotiators. Arriving on the second day of the European Council meeting on Friday, Mr Barnier said: "We have made progress but huge and serious divergence remains, in particular on Ireland and Northern Ireland." He also said he hoped to see "workable and realistic" proposals from the UK on what the future relationship between the UK and EU should look like. "The time is very short. We want a deal and are working for a deal, the time is short and I am ready to invite the UK delegation to come back to Brussels next Monday." European leaders at the summit welcomed progress on the legal text of the withdrawal agreement but noted that "important aspects still need to be agreed" including the territorial application of the deal "notably as regards Gibraltar". Talks between Spain and the UK over Gibraltar, including access to its airport and the exchange of tax information, continue. They also expressed concern that "no substantial progress has yet been achieved on agreeing a backstop solution for Ireland/Northern Ireland", if a deal on customs arrangements is not agreed by December 2020. when the transition period is due to end. And they called on member states and EU institutions "to step up their work on preparedness at all levels and for all outcomes" - European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker has said the EU must prepare for the possibility that no Brexit deal will be reached. Prime Minister Theresa May has called her cabinet together for what has been billed as a make-or-break meeting at her country residence, Chequers, on 6 July to agree the UK's blueprint for its future relations with the EU. Her own cabinet is divided over what the UK's customs arrangements after December 2020 should look like, when the transition period agreed with the EU is due to end. And there are disagreements over the future movement of goods and people across the border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland. On Thursday, Mrs May said a strong future partnership with the EU was in everyone's interests. "I think both sides are keen to continue that work at a faster pace than we have done up till now and certainly we would welcome that," she said. She added that the UK would publish a White Paper setting out "in more detail [the] strong partnership the United Kingdom wants to see with the European Union in the future". But she urged fellow EU leaders to tell their negotiators the UK should be allowed to continue to take part in schemes like the Prum mechanism for sharing DNA profiles, the Second Generation Schengen Information System - a database of "real time" alerts about certain individuals - and the European Criminal Records Information System. Without UK participation in such schemes, she suggested their collective ability to fight terrorism would be reduced. Mr Barnier has argued the UK cannot remain part of some policing agreements after Brexit because it wanted to leave the European Court of Justice and free movement rules. Labour MP Virendra Sharma, a member of Best for Britain, which campaigns for a referendum on the final Brexit deal, said Mr Barnier's warning was a "confirmation of the government's lack of professionalism": "It's been two years and they are still fighting amongst themselves." Read again Brexit: Barnier warns 'huge' differences remain in talks : https://ift.tt/2KvLFusBrexit has taken up an extraordinary amount of media time and space since the United Kingdom made its decision to withdraw from the European Union in 2016. Yet few would have anticipated the current focus on the 1998 Belfast or Good Friday Agreement, which has sustained the peace that we have enjoyed on this island for the past 20 years. Fewer still would have suspected that the biggest threat to that historic settlement would be a unilateral withdrawal of the United Kingdom from the European Union. Time is running out on solutions to avoid a hard exit from the human rights and equality architecture that has underpinned Ireland-UK relations for decades. This is not an academic complaint: that architecture is what supports the everyday choices of people living on both sides of the Border, who regularly travel back and forth to access healthcare, work, childcare and education. Nor is it academic for people living in Northern Ireland, who have no desire to go back to the days when two people born on the same street grow up with two different sets of rights. This is what is at stake when we argue that the North-South equivalence of rights must be safeguarded after Brexit, and enforceable in the final Withdrawal Agreement. Progress towards a lasting resolution of the conflict in Northern Ireland has been grounded in the human rights and equality provisions of the Good Friday Agreement, which itself was rooted in the assumption that both the UK and Ireland would continue to be members of the EU. Although the Joint Report of December 2017 committed to protecting the 1998 Agreement “in all its parts”, Brexit negotiations currently depart from that common framework, which creates significant risks for both rights and remedies. As European Commission president Jean-Claude Juncker said in his address to the Oireachtas last week: “The Good Friday Agreement should be preserved in its entirety. Every line, every letter.” The Joint Committee, a body of representatives of the Irish Human Rights and Equality Commission and the Northern Ireland Human Rights Commission set up by the Agreement, has recommended a clear and enforceable commitment to no diminution of human rights and equality standards post-Brexit. Retaining the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights is one way of achieving this. The right to live, work or travel in the EU needs to be extended to all the people of Northern Ireland Although the British government has made many promises not to reduce human rights and equality standards after withdrawal, the question of what happens following the final exit day remains a significant concern to us. It is unclear how people will be able to vindicate those rights if the Court of Justice of the European Union is not an option any more. Given that the Bill of Rights for Northern Ireland envisaged in the 1998 Agreement has still not come to pass, at the very least Northern Ireland needs to remain within the EU human rights and equality legislative framework, or maintain an equivalence with those standards on an evolving basis. Otherwise, there is a real fear that Northern Ireland will fall behind not only Ireland and the EU, but also the UK. Northern Ireland has a particular status within the United Kingdom as a place that is home to multiple identities. The 1998 Agreement recognises “the birthright of all the people of Northern Ireland to identify themselves and be accepted as Irish or British, or both, as they may so choose”. It is imperative that we avoid a situation where the people of Northern Ireland feel forced to choose their identity based on what they think their post-Brexit entitlements might be. The right to live, work or travel in the EU needs to be extended to all the people of Northern Ireland regardless of what passport they hold. Careful considerationWhile we have welcomed the careful consideration given to avoiding a hard Border at all costs, we remain focused on protecting rights and equality in a way that goes beyond existing Common Travel Area arrangements. The Common Travel Area does not answer questions about the right to cross the Border for essential healthcare, or education, or employment. The EU’s work and investment to address disadvantage and community division in Northern Ireland, particularly in Border areas, stands to be undermined by potential restrictions on the freedom to move, work or access services. Along with my fellow Chief Commissioner in Northern Ireland, Les Allamby, I have met Mr Barnier and his task force, with Permanent Missions in Brussels and, just last week, with the minister and officials of DExEU in Westminster, the UK Department for Exiting the European Union. In these meetings we have continually and explicitly raised our concerns about the human rights and equality implications of Brexit for the island of Ireland. While we welcome the proposed “dedicated mechanism” to oversee human rights and equality in a post-Brexit landscape, we must ensure that any such mechanism is not seen as a substitute for effective judicial-based remedies which provide proper redress. We are ever mindful of the precarious political situation in Northern Ireland. The imperative for spelling out precisely how rights will be protected remains key to the negotiations at this time. Emily Logan is the chief commissioner of the Irish Human Rights and Equality Commission Read again Brexit must not force people to choose if they are British or Irish : https://ift.tt/2yRHGDR |
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