TOT: Not for EU

All to do with Northern Ireland. This explains it simply:

More like not do things. Totally stupid. Bought some Italian Parma Ham in M&S. Produce of Italy, Labelled not for EU.

Dave

Doesn't sound stupid to me, once you think beyond the tabloid headlines. Ham is exported from Italy to the UK, probably in whole legs. Ham is packed in the UK. The UK is outside the EU biosecurity area, so EU rules don't apply and pathogens could get into the packaging. The producer doesn't want to do the necessary checks to import the packed product back into the EU, so they label it 'not for EU' so it can be supplied to NI but not RoI.

With foot and mouth in Germany, pork products from Germany are currently banned. You might want to know whether UK pork has been shipped to Germany for packing, picked up some F&M contamination and shipped back again, which is why there are biosecurity checks. The customs border is where checks happen, and the UK is now outside it so product passing between UK and EU is subject to the checks.

Theo

I suspect M&S do that so as not to have a separate system for NI.

Bless their marvellous EU hygiene standards.

-- "Strange as it seems, no amount of learning can cure stupidity, and higher education positively fortifies it."

- Stephen Vizinczey

So stringent that horse meat was being sold as beef, without anyone catching it for some time!

Yes, mine was M&S too. What you are saying it that it can be done for administrative convenience with no inherent unsuitability for the EU market?

Will the goods in the EU say 'Not for UK' :-)

and some Austrian wine contained a poisonous alcohol.

I think the system expects people to obey the rules. The idea that people would cheat never occured to anybody - except the cheats.

That was 40 years ago!

Austria was not even part of the EU until 1995...

But yes, there is not 100% checking of all products so some will slip through - and cheaters can game that.

Theo

That may have been 40 years ago. This wasn't

why should they? It's just that goods sold in NI may not be sold in the south.

If it hasn't passed the certifications and been tested its unsuitable for the EU market. EU suitability is as much about paper work than actual quality of the goods. One of the original reasons we joined was to avoid non-tariff trade barriers. I seem to remember the French insisting all Video Recorders were tested, but only had one man in a mountain hut in the Pyrenes which was snowed in for six months of the year doing the testing...

Of course not. I think little has changed coming from the EU. Apart from some temporary restrictions on Pork and Honey you can bring most things from the EU to the UK..

Dave

If I understood the explanation correctly, the reason they would do this would be to allow common stock and common labelling in GB and NI. Is it correct to state that goods sold in NI may not be sold in the south? Surely this depends on what the goods are and where they came from? If they are produced in the UK to EU standards, or if they are imported from the EU, or imported from China and marked CE, then surely there is no restriction on transferring them to the south (or am I missing something?)

WE are happy to ease restrictions on our side. its the EU playing dog in the manger. We never set out to punish the EU.

Apropos of this, can anyone explain why we had to agree to anything at all in re: Northern Ireland? We said we would not be putting a hard border there whatever happened, so we should have simply stuck to that position. Let the EU put one there, if it's so important to them.

That was a long time ago, IIRC. ISTR that they finally sold much of it to an airport for de-icing runways.

Like most things - tighten regulations and laws, in ways that harm the public and expect the criminals to follow the rules. When they don't, the tighten the rules more!

We didn't. The EU said it WOULD place a hard border there, and in the Good Friday agreement we said we would ensure there was no hard border, but of course the EU might have been bluffing...

Dave

The irish government threatened fire breathing dragons and other apocryphal monstrosities if they had to put a border up and complained it contravened the GFA,.

May meekly accepted it and it wasn't possible to get rid of it again