‘We will have to stand on our own two feet following Brexit’
GUERNSEY will need to stand on ‘our own two feet’ when it comes to the European Union after Brexit, Gavin St Pier has said.
The president of P&R said that the island would not be able to fall back on the political power of the UK once it had left the European Union – which is currently due to happen on 29 March.
Speaking at the regular Guernsey Chamber of Commerce lunch, Deputy St Pier underscored the seriousness of the situation by referring to work undertaken around new economic substance requirements on companies to stay off an EU tax blacklist.
‘In a post-Brexit future, with no UK to represent us around the EU table, we will have to stand on our own two feet.
‘We will be judged on what we do and what we don’t do – we will not have any UK political leverage to fall back on,’ he said.
‘If we are blacklisted, we will have no equivalence with the EU in the major trade areas our finance sector in particular needs. So let me say it again. In 2018, the EU reaffirmed Guernsey as a co-operative jurisdiction.
‘The importance of that cannot be understated.
‘We have fought our corner politically and got the right outcome.
‘That reaffirmation of our co-operative, white-list status enables us to stay competitive.’
He added: ‘Government in partnership with industry has worked extremely hard in 2018 to deliver on our political commitment to the EU to introduce an economic substance test from 1 January into our domestic legal regime.
‘I am confident we have done everything to date we could reasonably do to ensure that the decision of the Council of Finance Ministers in the next couple of months should be favourable. I will be in Brussels again later this week continuing to work to ensure that outcome.’
As well as being engaged with and regularly meeting UK ministers and officials, Deputy St Pier highlighted how the island’s government was engaged with EU member states’ representatives in Brussels.
This week, he will be meeting the German, Dutch, Danish, Luxembourg and UK representatives.
‘As an aside, we will also, of course, be lobbying on the ridiculous decision taken at Christmas by the Dutch to place us on their national tax blacklist. It is absurd given it cuts across the work undertaken at EU level,’ he added.
