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While 75 percent said the EU should make concessions to the U.K. to secure a better trade deal for their businesses, more than a third also wanted to see Britain punished.
The report gives a rare insight into the views on Brexit from businesses outside the U.K. and comes after Airbus SE said last week it might pull its investment from Britain in the event of a no-deal scenario. While British companies have been creating contingency plans to try to avoid chaos post-Brexit, their EU counterparts have been less forthcoming.
That may be changing. EU leaders are poised to warn the U.K. after this week’s European Council summit that a breakdown in talks is a real possibility, people with knowledge of the situation told Bloomberg last week. The leaders are considering instructing their own governments to step up contingency measures to cope with such a scenario, the people said.
“The clock continues ticking on a Brexit deal and, without any clarity as to its final shape, businesses in both the EU and U.K. are inevitably having to take matters into their own hands,” said Ross Denton, a trade lawyer at Baker McKenzie. This could hurt “the U.K. economy in the long run if, as our survey suggests, EU27 businesses continue to rethink or pull the plug on their U.K. investments.”
Participation Lacking
Survey respondents bemoaned a lack of participation in the negotiations, with 54 percent saying they hadn’t been properly consulted on Brexit. A similar number said their views hadn’t been well represented in the talks.
The surveyed executives are at businesses in France, Germany, Spain, the Netherlands, Sweden and Ireland. All work at companies with at least 250 million pounds ($332 million) in annual revenue, with 32 percent exceeding 1 billion pounds. [...]