OUR withdrawal her Britannia from European Union They account for about a third of the growth in household food bills since 2019, around £250, according to researchers at the London School of Economics and other universities.

The UK has been battling inflation for over a year, partly due to the highest rise in food prices since 1977, when prices rose by more than 19% last year.

What the Evidence Shows

Although there is an agreement between London and Brussels to allow duty-free trade in food products, barriers to exports and imports in the form of bureaucracy, known as non-tariff barriers, cause delays and higher costs.

A study by the Center for Economic Efficiency (CEP) compared the price changes of food imported from the European Union with those of food imported from other regions.

The study says that before Brexit, the prices of these products recorded similar trends, but after Brexit there was a relative increase in prices for goods more influenced by imports from the EU, and this continued until 2023.

The study found that from January 2022 to March 2023, food prices that were affected by Brexit rose about 3.5 percentage points more than prices that were not affected.

Cost to households and criticisms

Taking into account the impact on food prices since December 2019, just before the UK formally left the EU, researchers have estimated the cost of Brexit to UK households at £6.95bn (€8m), or £250 per family. .

From December 2019 to March 2023, food prices in the UK rose by almost 25 percentage points, according to the study.

“Our analysis shows that if not for Brexit, this figure would be 8 percentage points (30%) lower,” says CEP.

Prices of goods with high non-tariff barriers, such as meat and cheese imported from the EU, have risen by about 10 percentage points compared to similar products not affected by Brexit since January 2021, when the UK Trade and Cooperation Agreement (TCA) was signed. ) with the EU. EU applied

Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s spokesman said last week that Britain’s exit from the European Union was not a failure, reflecting criticism from prominent Eurosceptic politicians over the way Brexit was handled.

^{Source: APE-MEB, Reuters}