The EU food deal lifts paperwork from one border and lays it on another

Britain and the European Union have agreed the draft of an agreement that much of the food industry has been waiting for since 2021. It runs to some 200 pages, and it would end most of the checks and certificates that have sat on food and farm exports to the EU since Britain left the single market. The text went to EU ambassadors in Brussels this week, and leaders are expected to sign it off at their summit there on 20 November. Nothing changes at the port yet. The government had aimed for the agreement to take effect in mid-2027, but reports this week suggest early 2028 is now more likely.

What would go

For anyone who has filled in the forms, the list makes satisfying reading. Export health certificates, at around £200 each. Phytosanitary certificates at £25. Inspection fees, organic certificates, sampling fees and some port charges. Several products shut out of the EU since 2021 would be allowed back: fresh sausages and burgers, seed potatoes, and shellfish from British waters. The government puts the eventual gain to the economy at £5.1bn a year.

For a small exporter, the certificate itself is rarely the largest cost. The larger cost is the minimum load. A vet's signature and a border inspection cost much the same for one pallet as for twenty, so in practice it has paid only to send full loads. Groupage, the shared lorry that small producers once relied on, became hard to make work. If the certificate goes, the small consignment can pay its way again.

What Britain gives in return

The price is alignment. Britain would follow EU rules on animal, plant and food standards as they change, with only a short list of agreed exceptions. Precision-bred plants, where England has gone its own way, are covered by transition arrangements while the EU's own rules come in. The Food Standards Agency has already noted that products authorised only in Great Britain could lose that status once the agreement applies, with EU authorisations becoming the ones that count. That reaches beyond the export trade. A farm that never sells abroad may still rely on a pesticide, a feed additive or a supplement approved only here.

The other border

The agreement eases one border and tightens another. Alignment covers what Britain imports from the rest of the world, not only what it sends to Europe. The Fresh Produce Consortium, which speaks for most of the fruit and vegetable trade, has put the cost of EU-style controls on non-EU produce at more than £300m a year, on roughly half the country's fresh produce imports. Citrus, mangoes, avocados and blueberries do not wait well at a border post.

So the deal moves cost around as much as it removes it. Who gains depends on where a business buys and where it sells.

Where it lands in the north

For a meat processor or a dairy selling into Ireland, France or the Netherlands, the gain is direct: fewer certificates, fewer days lost, and smaller loads that pay. For a shellfish merchant on the Yorkshire or Northumberland coast, product that has been shut out may have a market again. Seed potato growers have waited five years for this. Movements from Great Britain to Northern Ireland should also ease, which matters to anyone with a customer across the Irish Sea.

For an importer or wholesaler buying from South Africa, Peru or Kenya, the arithmetic runs the other way. It is better done before the agreement applies than after.

What to do now

None of this applies yet, and the text can still change. A few things are worth doing while it settles.

1. Count what the EU border costs you now: certificates, vet time, inspection and port fees, days lost, and loads held back until they were full. That is what the agreement could give back, and the baseline you will need when you reprice for it.

2. List the products and customers you dropped after 2021. Some may be worth reopening.

3. Check your inputs for anything approved only in Great Britain: pesticides, feed additives, supplements. Ask your suppliers what alignment means for each.

4. If you import from outside the EU, estimate what EU-style checks would add per consignment, and which lines are most exposed to delay.

5. Keep working to the current border rules until the agreement is in force. They still apply.

I will come back to this after the summit on 20 November, when the text should be settled.

Sources

• BBC News — UK and EU agree draft deal to scrap Brexit red tape over food exports, 3 November 2026

• FoodNavigator — The new SPS deal has been agreed in principle: here's everything we know so far, 4 November 2026

• GOV.UK — Prime Minister to attend UK-EU summit in Brussels on 20 November, October 2026

• Defra — UK-EU SPS Agreement: call for information, March 2026

• Food Standards Agency — potential impact of an SPS agreement on GB market authorisations of regulated products, 2026

• Farmers Weekly — Fresh produce body warns SPS deal 'shifts' border costs, 2026

• The Grocer — Burnham urged to avert £300m SPS deal hit to shoppers, 2026

• Cover photo: Port of Dover, by Bernd Dittrich on Unsplash

Figures are taken from the sources listed and were correct at the time of writing. Where rules are described, check the latest official guidance and take qualified advice before acting.