UK-based blockchain firm Eris Industries has called for supporting the EEA Option to mitigate risks brought on by the country’s vote to leave the European Union .
Eris’ COO and General Counsel Preston Byrne writes that the Brexit vote is a tremendous disappointment for British business over all.
Byrne explains why this is especially the case for Eris and other technology firms…
Two years ago, Eris Industries had three employees who worked out of our homes. Today, we have 17, with our head office remaining for the moment in London, an office in Berlin, and a subsidiary operating from New York.
We are Europeans. Our team is French, Italian, Belgian, German, Swiss, English and Scottish. (American, Canadian, and South African, too.) We simply could not have assembled this team, and grown as we have, without the UK being a member of the EU.
The company expects a lot of tension across London and the UK over the coming weeks and months.
But Eris’ management believes that businesses can reduce Brexit risk by calling for options and adopting a common position. In Eris Industries’ view, the “best option on the table” is what the Adam Smith Institute describes as the EEA Option.
The Institute explains in its own declaration:
The best exit route is for the UK to step back to a position in the European Economic Area (‘EEA’) and the European Free Trade Association (‘EFTA’), thereby wholly maintaining the open trading arrangements of the single market and related economic integration.
Byrne concludes that, without freedom of movement in Europe, British firms will not be able compete effectively in global markets as the UK talent pool is too small for their requirements. Thus, Eris calls for free movement of labor, single passports for financial services, and tariff-free trade with the EU, would be effectively mitigate risk brought by UK’s Brexit.
