UK and EU agree deal to remove Brexit checks on food and animal products

Agreement to ease rules on food imports and exports is expected to come into force in first quarter of 2028

The EU and the UK have completed their deal to remove Brexit checks on imports and exports of food and animal products ranging from sausages and cheese to leather goods and flowers.

A wider series of mini-deals expected to be sealed at a UK-EU summit on 20 November would also result in Britain once again contributing to the EU budget as the price of rejoining a single electricity market.

It will prove a boon for British food exporters and will also mean smaller retailers in the UK such as delicatessens can return to buying smaller batches of cheese and wines, something that became impossible because of the cost of Brexit checks introduced in 2022.

But sources say the sanitary and phytosanitary (SPS) deal, largely agreed in May, will not be implemented until the first quarter of 2028 after the change in UK prime minister caused a six-month delay to the second EU-UK summit, now due to be held on 20 November.

Last month the National Farmers’ Union said exports of British food to the EU had collapsed by a third since Brexit, with eggs, chicken and potato products worst hit.

Sources said a 200-page text on post-Brexit food exports had “been settled and there will no further negotiation”.

A draft of a joint statement to be issued by the British prime minister, Andy Burnham, and EU leaders on 20 November is to be discussed by EU ambassadors at a meeting in Brussels on Wednesday.

It states the SPS deal would allow “the vast majority of movements of animals, animal products, plants and plant products between Great Britain and the crown dependencies and the EU to take place without the certificates or controls that are currently required”.

It adds that the UK goods would also be exempt from a carbon pollution tax, known as the carbon border adjustment mechanism, as the bloc and Britain are already aligned on emmissions.

Rejoining the EU’s single electricity market is designed to help stabilise supplies but will allow UK energy companies to sell into continental grids again.

The draft joint text says: “We agree that the UK’s participation in parts of the EU’s internal market requires an appropriate level of financial contribution towards reducing economic and social disparities between the regions of the EU that reflects the degree of the UK’s participation in the EU’s internal market”.

The deal has divided opinion among unionists in Northern Ireland, with Gavin Robinson, the leader of the Democratic Unionist party, saying it does not go far enough and reflects what he sees as a “lack of ambition” by the government.

The DUP, which is in turmoil after the MP Carla Lockhart’s decision to quit the party on Monday, supported Brexit but not the Windsor framework part of the withdrawal agreement because it cemented SPS checks on goods sold into Northern Ireland from Great Britain.