Adam Austerfield was interviewed on the Talk Radio Europe programme ´Britain Decides’ with Stephen Ritson on 1 June 2016. What would the impact be on ex-pat businesses in Spain in the event of EU exit?
Book-makers this week have seen a turn towards the majority of bets predicting Britain will leave the EU, but there are still two and a half weeks to go before the final vote on the 23 June. In the seventh of a series of special programmes on Talk Radio Europe (Spain), Stephen Ritson talked to Adam Austerfield on the implications for British business owners working in Spain if the UK were to leave the EU. Adam Austerfield is the Director of Global Market Development at LSE Enterprise and Vice-President of the British Chambers of Commerce in Spain. Raoul Ruparel, Co-Director at Open Europe, was also interviewed for the radio programme.
The ‘Vote Leave’ campaign points towards the World Trade Organization (WTO) rules that already govern trade between countries. Adam was asked to explain why a British import and export business in Spain needs the European Union free trade agreement when the WTO already exists:
The WTO – the UK has been a member for many years – is a very useful and democratic institution. It would be used as a backup, but it would not in any way improve the much lower transaction and tariff costs of intra-European Union trade. The WTO is not nearly as advanced as the European agreements. It is still a very different system.
One of the points, coming from the British Chamber of Commerce, [97% of whom are in favour of staying in], is that negotiating with huge economies like the U.S or China as an EU member makes a huge difference. Trade deals are better done EU to China rather than Britain to China. It makes a big difference to people’s businesses.
In his capacity as Vice-President of the British Chambers of Commerce in Spain, Adam was asked for the main concerns he hears when talking to ex-pats with businesses in Spain.
Andalucía has a lot of SMEs [small and medium-sized enterprises]; Madrid has mainly multinational companies and Barcelona a bit of a mix. The message seems to be similar – most people have a great deal of fatigue having come through a very difficult financial crisis here in Spain, certainly the second worst after Greece. Just as people are getting back on their feet again the ex-pat business community are faced with a lot of uncertain questions about their future and no one knows what the outcome will be. The companies that we work with in our network are finding that very difficult and probably the most difficult at the SME level. If you’ve been able to survive the last six or seven years and if you have connections in the UK, you have staff in the UK, you´re employing people in Spain and if you have strong UK connections or suppliers – it looks like it’s going to be much more difficult. People are talking a lot about transaction costs and the difficulty of getting things done, which is hard enough in Spain as quite a bureaucratic country. If we’re non-EU members or nationals, that’s going to become even more difficult [to bring on a new member of staff, or someone from the UK]. Getting things done is going to be increasingly difficult and people are telling us about that.
In conclusion, Adam predicts that if the UK were to leave the EU the message is that it will have an impact, but not to panic:
One of the major points we can agree on is not to panic if the UK leaves the EU. It will have a big impact, but take many years to do new deals and unravel old ones.
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