Brexit consequences: Why a British wine merchant emigrated to France

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Grape harvest in Great Britain (icon image)

Photo: Dylan Martinez / REUTERS

Daniel Lambert wrote on Twitter last Friday that he would finally leave “Brexitland” in just a week – someone should please let him know when the promised sun-drenched highlands were found, he added sarcastically.

Lambert is a wine wholesaler and is doing what many British entrepreneurs probably thought of after Great Britain left the EU: he is emigrating.

Lambert plans to move to Montpellier, France, with his wife and two teenage children.

Lambert wrote on Twitter in January 2021 that Brexit was “the greatest threat to my company” in 30 years.

Financially, the company has apparently had to take a lot since Brexit: the entire additional paperwork would cost him between “100,000 and 150,000 pounds”, Lambert told the “Guardian”.

So now he's doing what the government suggested, "namely, have one company here and one in the EU to cushion the impact of Brexit."

According to the report, Lambert imports more than two million bottles of wine to the United Kingdom every year.

With his company, he supplies large chains such as Waitrose and Marks & Spencer, but also 300 retailers.

During the pandemic, business boomed, income increased by £500,000: because the pubs were closed, people drank at home.

361 different categories for wine - and several of them on each pallet

Since Brexit, it has become a "nightmare" to import wine across the English Channel, writes the Guardian.

Each type of wine has its own commodity number, which depends on factors such as the grape variety, the type of wine, the alcohol content, but also the size of the container and the possible protected designation of origin.

The Guardian writes that there are 361 different categories for wine alone.

However, different wine crates are delivered on a pallet, with additional fees being charged for each one, the report says.

As a result, according to Lambert, out of the hundreds of truckers who previously transported alcohol, there are only "four or five" left.

They "can pretty much do whatever they want with the fees," Lambert told the Guardian.

Up to £400 would be charged for individual deliveries.

A second company in France is now said to enable Lambert to circumvent these fees - by having his French company apply for a special export license to Great Britain and his British company retaining the import license for goods from the EU.

According to Lambert, he has a French passport as well as a British one – and he is apparently not alone in his frustration: In a survey by the British Chambers of Commerce association in February of this year, only twelve percent of exporting companies stated that the post-Brexit Trade pact with the EU is helping to increase their business.

This was not the case for 71 percent.

Entrepreneur Lambert told the Guardian that it was "absolutely unbelievable that in the 21st century people are effectively prevented from importing from Europe" - if they are not willing to pay a lot of money.

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