News
Good morning and welcome to your Unbound Daily Briefing, for Tuesday 14th July - topics we are covering today include:
- Brexit to Save The World From Ebola?
- New Landmark UK-Switzerland FTA
Brexit to Save The World From Ebola?
A new vaccine for a strain of Ebola has been developed by scientists at Oxford University, and has been approved to commence human trials by the UK regulator, the MHRA. The technology being utilised for this new vaccine is that which was developed in response to the Covid pandemic, which has allowed it to be created in just 8 weeks in order to respond to an outbreak in DR Congo which has seen hundreds of deaths.
The fast-track approval of these human trials? This is down to post-Brexit reforms not possible from within the EU.
Brexit removed the constraint of EU alignment and gave the UK the freedom to create a more flexible, risk-based, and fast-track-oriented system. The UK then actively used that freedom (via the 2023+ reforms and 2026 regulations) to deliver faster approvals and set-up times.
Should the trials be successful - and we wish the team of scientists the best of luck - the post-Brexit reforms will quite literally save lives.
New Landmark UK-Switzerland FTA
The UK and Swiss governments announced yesterday that they had concluded negotiations on a new landmark Free Trade Agreement. This modern agreement looks to enhance that secured as a rollover of the EU deal in 2019, and builds upon the Berne Financial Services Agreement which came into force earlier this year.
The trade deal is primarily focused on services trade, as both the UK and Switzerland are services-based economies, and has been described by the two governments as being "the most significant services trade deal ever negotiated".
With the negotiations have only just formally concluded, the full terms are yet to be fully legally codified into a single text for review and critique, however the details released thus far include up to 90 days of visa-free work for services professionals in the two respective countries; a temporary services mobility agreement being made permanent; streamlined intra-company staff transfers for up to 5 years; UK use of Swiss eGates for travellers; and mobile roaming charges scrapped for customers from the two countries.
As has often been remarked upon, the EU Single Market is at best unfinished and at worst non-existent. Without Brexit this agreement could not exist, as the EU reserves the ability to negotiate trade agreements.
