By Celestine Osemeilu
The divorce settlement between Britain and its many ‘wives’ seem not to be ending well. This is because a hard Brexit will cost EU countries €40 billion annually, a study on the impact of Brexit on EU incomes from the German think tank Bertelsmann Stiftung has found. New tariffs after the UK leaves the EU single market would make trade in goods and services very expensive.
Only China and USA will benefit from Brexit, the study says.
The UK would face the biggest income loss: €57 billion per year, or €900 per capita, Germany and France, both export-oriented countries, would lose respectively €10 and €8 billion per year, while Brexit would cost Italians around €4 billion.
“The regions affected the most are typically those that have strong industry, for example the automotive industry in countries like Germany and parts of Spain and Italy. Also, financial services and IT services trade with the UK would be affected. And generally, we find that highly productive regions (like some Scandinavian hubs) would lose out the most”, the economist Dominic Ponattu of Bertelsmann Stiftung says. He conducted the study with Giordano Mion of the University of Sussex.
