Wider technical standards and regulations
European Standardisation Regulation – 2012/1025 – describes how the EU works with standardisation and a legal hierarchy of standards and how they relate to each other.
Information and communications technology (ICT) and digital technical standards are driven by industry and commercial needs. Standards bodies formally recognised by governments predominate on telecoms-related issues, but newer commercially-led standards organisations (sometimes called ‘ad hoc’ or ‘de facto’ organisations) are widely used in newer digital technologies. The current digital ecosystem uses standards from a complex mix of both sources. The major formal organisations include the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) and the European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI).
Amongst major ‘de facto’ organisations are the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) and the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF). The commercial nature of most of these bodies means the UK’s relationship with them is unlikely to change as a result of the its exit from the EU. The UK’s British Standards Institution (BSI) participates in European institutions CEN and CENELEC, which provide platforms for the development of European Standards and other technical specifications. The BSI’s future membership of CEN and CENELEC is primarily a matter for the BSI.Existing frameworks for how trade is facilitated between countries in this sector
The arrangements described in this section are examples of existing arrangements between countries. They should not be taken to represent the options being considered by the Government for the future economic relationship between the UK and the EU. The Government has been clear that it is seeking pragmatic and innovative solutions to issues related to the future deep and special partnership thatwe want with the EU.
There are a number of existing arrangements governing the way in which non-EU Member States trade with the EU in this sector.
World Trade Organisation (WTO) rules set out the basis for trade globally, through agreements such as the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), the General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS) and the Agreement on TradeRelated Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) agreements.
Signatories are also able to enter into further economic integration arrangements through bilateral (country to country) or plurilateral (regional) trading relationships. These build on WTO rules and seek to liberalise trade commitments for relevant sectors further.
In the case of trade in services, such agreements seek to identify and remove nontariff barriers to trade, such as nationality requirements or limitations on the number of service suppliers across four modes of supply – cross border trade; consumption abroad; commercial presence; and presence of natural persons.
From a digital goods perspective, the Information Technology Agreement (ITA), signed in 1996, lowers all taxes and tariffs on information technology products by signatories to zero. At the Nairobi Ministerial Conference in December 2015, over 50 members concluded the expansion of the Agreement, which now covers an additional 201 products valued at over US$1.3 trillion per year. These products include video games and consoles, home hi-fi systems, headphones, blue-ray/DVD players, semi-conductors, and GPS devices.
The digital sub-sector is dynamic and changes quickly, which has posed some challenges in reaching a widely accepted definition of what it encompasses and, therefore, securing deep trading commitments. As outlined above, the main framework for trade in services is rooted in the 1996 WTO General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS), which pre-dates the large majority of modern digital transformation. This means that the most relevant part of GATS provisions cover access to telecommunications markets and infrastructure, without a broader emphasis on digital trade.
However, there are increasing precedents for provisions which enable digital trade in a range of agreements, which go further than the GATS provisions. For example, recent free trade agreements have sought to address mobile network issues, including network access, mobile roaming, and trade issues related to cross-border data flows.