作者：金杜律师事务所 King & Wood Mallesons

Tday_rhere’s been a lot of talk about pros and cons of Brexit, but very few hard facts. In fact, there are hardly any economic predictions about the potential pros and cons of Brexit and even when you look at some of the wider reports, they are talking about potential GDP impacts by 2030, ranging from somewhere between minus 0.8 per cent and plus 0.6 per cent — so pretty small differences in both directions.

对于英国退欧的利弊已有很多讨论，但可靠的事实极为少见。实际上，对于英国退欧的潜在利弊几乎没有任何经济预测，甚至浏览主题更加广泛的报告时，也会发现它们所讨论的到2030年对潜在GDP的影响在-0.8%到+0.6%之间，但无论是正还是负，差别都非常小。

To risk the level of turmoil that Brexit necessarily brings, against such potentially small benefits or changes, strikes me as very high political risk. And when I look at the uncertainties that Brexit definitely delivers, there are certain things that we do know; there are certain things that we don’t know but there are some absolute certainties in the middle of it. We know that it will likely trigger another Scottish referendum. We don’t know who would actually lead the “out” negotiations, because it’s quite clear that David Cameron and his cabinet would not be the people to do that. So you would have, in one sense, a battle on two fronts with another Scottish referendum coming into the mix, with popular support having grown, if anything, since the last referendum — in spite of the economic collapse in the price of oil and gas.

在利益或变化可能如此小的背景下，不惜承担英国退欧必然带来的混乱的风险，这令我觉得存在非常高的政治风险。在我考虑英国退欧一定会带来的不确定性时，有些事我们确实知道，有些事我们确实不知道，但其中有些是绝对确定的。我们知道它很可能会再次引发苏格兰公投。我们不知道谁会实际主导“退欧”谈判，因为显然这些人不会是戴维-卡梅伦及其内阁。因此在某种意义上，你是在两条战线上与正在加入混战的另一场苏格兰公投斗争。自从上次公投以来，尽管石油和天然气价格的下跌会导致其经济崩溃，民众对苏格兰公投的支持仍然日益高涨。

And, at the same time, you don’t know who your negotiating team are, to lead you out of a Brexit referendum situation, which really matters because you’ve got a two year deadline. Yes, it can be extended by agreement, but we saw with Greece what happens in European political negotiations – showmanship, brinkmanship and frankly, a lot of delay.

而且，同时你并不知道你的谈判团队中有谁能带领你完成英国退欧公投，而这是真正要紧的，因为你只有两年时间。是的，可以通过协议延长该期限，但是从希腊身上我们已经看到了欧洲政治谈判中所发生的一切——演技、边缘政策，而且坦白讲，经常拖延。

It’s a complex process because you’re trying to simultaneously do two things: sever your existing relationships and connections and forge new bilateral trading agreements and other agreements, because you still have to have an ongoing relationship with the EU.

这是一个复杂的过程，因为你要努力同时做两件事：切断现有关系和联系，并缔结新的双边贸易协定及其他协定，因为你仍然需要与欧盟维持持久关系。

If I look at Iceland, a tiny country of around 50,000 people, it took something like three years to negotiate a free trade treaty with Europe and that was when they decided, obviously, to put their European accession on hold. At the time, they were negotiating 35 different areas to participate within the EU, ranging from goods, worker movements, services, capital, employment, public procurement, competition policy, financial policy, fisheries, transportation, energy and that was a very, very straightforward country. We’re not. All of those issues matter enormously to different parts of our economy. Agriculture matters; energy matters; oil and gas matters; financial services matters; export manufacturing – it all counts. So you’ve got to lead this incredibly complicated negotiation across at least 35 different areas with a two year deadline that will absolutely be used as political negotiating capital against the British, particularly in light of a Brexit decision to leave. You’re going to be facing clear uncertainty for a very prolonged period of time, not two years but potentially far, far longer, and the key question therefore is what makes that worth it? After all of that pain, all of that effort, all of that time with lawyers and government and politicians, administrators and bureaucrats — what makes it worth it? I’ve not seen that articulated, at least in terms of an economic story.

让我们看看冰岛。它是一个只有约50,000人口的小国，却花了大约三年时间与欧洲谈判自由贸易协定，而且这显然是在他们决定搁置加入欧盟谈判之后进行的。当时，他们在谈判要参加的欧盟内的35个不同领域，从货物、工人流动、服务、资本、就业、公共采购、竞争政策、财政政策、渔业、交通运输到能源，而且冰岛是一个非常、非常简单的国家。但我们不是。所有这些问题对我们经济的不同部分都非常重要。农业重要；能源重要；石油和天然气重要；金融服务重要；出口制造业——全都很重要。因此，你必须在两年的期限内引导这一涵盖35个不同领域的极其复杂的谈判过程，这绝对会被用做针对英国人的政治谈判资本，特别是考虑到英国的退欧决定。你会在非常长的时间内（不止两年，可能远远超过两年）面临明显的不确定性，因此关键问题是，是什么让这样做是值得的？在律师及政府和政治家、管理者和官僚经历了所有这些痛苦、付出了所有这些努力、经过了所有的这些时间后——是什么让这样做是值得的？至少在经济方面，我没有看到详细阐述这一问题的文章。