‘Transition period’ will be needed for Brexit

It will be impossible for the UK to fully negotiate its future relationship with the EU within the two-year timeframe of the exit procedure, an expert report has concluded.

An interim deal to smooth the UK’s departure from the EU will be an “absolute necessity”, said Anand Menon, a European politics researcher at King’s College London and director of The UK in a Changing Europe group. He was speaking at the launch of the group’s report, Brexit and Beyond: How the UK might leave the EU, in London on 2 November.

Simon Usherwood, an academic based at the UK’s University of Surrey and an expert adviser of the group, agreed that it will take more than two years to negotiate the UK’s future relationship with the EU. He said that this will necessitate a transitional agreement to be in place by the time the UK formally leaves the EU, which it is expected to do by March 2019. Matters to be resolved over a longer timeframe will include the status of EU law in the UK, and the UK’s budgetary commitments after Brexit, he added.