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The UK is readying itself to submit a crucial application to the World Trading Organisation (WTO) outlining how it intends to trade with the rest of the globe after Brexit. And London’s case will be strengthened as the document is set to be a joint proposal alongside the European Union, which will need to amend its own membership terms after losing the world’s fifth biggest economy.

GETTY The UK and EU will work together on WTO issues

According to sources in Brussels the EU and the UK are planning to put forward a combined dossier with their plans for the future to bosses at the WTO in the early Autumn. Officials said securing a smooth transition from being a WTO member inside the EU to being one outside it is “important” to UK officials who are championing a vision of a ‘Global Britain’.

The UK is currently a member of the global trading bloc but has for the last 40 years given up its seat to the EU Commission, which represents the 28 member states in all trading matters. And the EU’s support for Britain’s rehabilitation as an individual member will come as a big boost to Downing Street, with some commentators predicting there could be a tricky legal road ahead. Brexit supporters are likely to argue it shows that, despite some of the poisonous political rhetoric flying around, both sides have a deep interest in a mutually beneficial and pragmatic trading relationship in the future. An EU source said: “Currently we are in talks with the United Kingdom to come to a joint approach on the matter, on all the aspects of the divorce, with regard to the WTO."

They added: "And I would think that, come the month of September/October, we will be able to come jointly to the rest of the (WTO) membership. “The plan is [that] we would explain together how we would see the disentanglement of the United Kingdom from the EU commitments and schedules.” The joint approach would address aspects of the EU’s WTO membership terms, known as its WTO “schedules”, that are not easily split between Britain and the other 27 EU members. These would include thorny issues for the UK outside the EU including agricultural tariff quotas, agricultural subsidies and commitments on services trade. Asked how important it was to finalise revision of the WTO terms of membership before the EU and Britain formally divorce, the source said: “I have the impression that the United Kingdom believes that is important.”

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