Sanctions strategy after BREXIT – what’s the plan?
Speaking before a UK parliamentary committee hearing (‘Global Britain: the future of UK sanctions policy inquiry’), Tom Keatinge, fellow of the Royal United Services Institute (‘RUSI’) told committee members that while written evidence provided by the Foreign Office on sanctions after BREXIT included ‘standard phrases about sanctions being an extension of foreign policy and part of a “tool-kit”’ that we’re used to hearing from all governments’, in terms of ‘What is the strategy? What are we trying to achieve? That’s not clear at this stage.’
Much, he said, would turn on the future of London’s finance hub:
‘The UK offers a particular lever to the European Union – which is the City of London. The question is, how are we going to use the financial power of this country once we’re out of the European Union. Of course, London will remain one of the biggest financial centres in the world. Therefore, if you believe that financial sanctions are a powerful tool, we have one of the most powerful sanctions tools in the world following BREXIT. But how do we plan to use that? And more generally, how will we employ economic statecraft?’
In its written statement, the UK Foreign Office said:
‘At the international level, the UK will continue to seek multilateral cooperation on sanctions in response to shared threats, given that a collective approach to sanctions achieves the greatest impact. This will include significant contributions to the development of UN sanctions.
‘The UK will look to remain a close partner of the EU on sanctions. As the Prime Minister set out in her speech at the Munich Security Conference on 17 February 2018, “[W]e will all be stronger if the UK and EU have the means to cooperate on sanctions now and potentially to develop them together in the future.”
‘Beyond the EU, the UK will also develop closer cooperation on sanctions with its allies and partners active in the use of sanctions, including, but not limited to, the United States, Canada and Australia. The United States, for example, is already a vital partner for the UK on sanctions, with extensive coordination already in place. There is also the potential for the UK to leverage its strong bilateral and multilateral relationships to bring together small groups of like-minded countries to agree joint proposals on sanctions.’
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