All imports of live animals and products of animal origin, 100%, would be subject to EU border controls once the UK leaves the EU, the EU’s chief Brexit negotiator Michel Barnier has said.

Barnier was speaking on Thursday at the European Economic and Social Committee. Once the UK exits the EU, it becomes a third country.

“This is one of the challenges that we have to address in the particular and unique case of Ireland, without recreating a hard border.

“Moreover, before these products can be exported from a third country to the European Union, the sanitary and phytosanitary conditions for these exports to take place would have to be established.

“One sees clearly, to speak frankly, the constraints that this entails for the agri-food industry,” he said.

Barnier added that a trading relationship with a country that does not belong to the European Union obviously involves friction.

Consequences

Barnier outlined that the decision to leave the EU has consequences.

“And we have to explain to citizens, businesses and civil society on both sides of the channel what these consequences mean for them.

“Let me be clear – these consequences are the direct result of the choices made by the UK, not by the EU.

“There is no punishment for Brexit. And of course no spirit of revenge.”

Preparation

The EU’s chief negotiator said that we must start to prepare as businesses, social partners, trade unions and civil society for the consequences of the UK's sovereign decision.

“Whatever the outcome of the negotiations will be, from midnight on 29 March 2019, as things stand, the UK will be a third country which therefore will not have the same facilities or the same rights as a member state.”

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