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The Brussels Report Podcast Episode 14 – with former British Conservative MEP Daniel Dalton

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Daniel Dalton is a former cricketer and a Conservative Party politician in the United Kingdom who has served as a Member of the European Parliament (MEP) from 2014 to 2019, previously having worked in the European Parliament for his party’s Group. He is the outgoing ceo of Britcham, the British Chamber of Commerce in the EU and Belgium.

In this this episode of the Brussels Report podcast, BrusselsReport.eu editor Pieter Cleppe discusses the following topics with him:

– Brexit: how to improve the current relationship and how to fix the ongoing disagreements?

– The EU approach to innovation and regulation

– The European Parliament and the EU after Brexit: did it change and how?

Daniel Dalton on the challenge to reconcile avoiding a hard border in Ireland with the UK’s desire to diverge when it comes to agricultural standards: 

“There is no huge demand in the UK to change [agricultural] standards. The sticking point is future standards, where the UK looks for an equivalence system. If the UK would give up its opposition to an SPS agreement and the EU would give up opposition to the UK aligning to future EU rules, we may get there. (…) “Alignment should be for the whole UK”, to avoid food checks between Britain and Northern Ireland.

“One of the reasons the UK wants wants to diverge, is for it to be able to get a trade deal with the U.S., which is a guarantor of the Good Friday Agreement. The U.S. could reassure the UK that the arrangement wouldn’t mean that UK would not be able to do deal with US.”