The context of “Brexit”
With the political situation in the UK, and no consensus in the UK Parliament, the prospect of a so-called “No Deal” Brexit is becoming increasingly likely. This post provides an update on what this means to our customers and prospects within the EU and EFTA. This post is applicable whether there is a withdrawal agreement in place or a no deal scenario occurs.
In summary you should have confidence that conducting business with us will be unaffected no matter which type of Brexit results. You can find the details of this in the sections below.
myairops is a global business, with customers inside and outside the EU, and regardless of Brexit, we have the necessary experience in dealing with export compliance, data privacy and information security.
Tariffs
As a provider of Software as a Service (SaaS) offerings myairops is pleased to confirm that regardless of the type of exit from the European Union there will be no tariffs that are applicable on our software.
In a no-deal scenario the WTO rules are clear, and have been established since 1998, as Cloud software would fall under the General Agreement in Trade in Services (GATS). The impact of this is that, alongside electronic commerce, SaaS services would remain tariff free.
Clearly in a scenario where the withdrawal agreement is approved this would also mean there would be tariff free trade on the products and services that we supply.
Furthermore, any of our current customers in the EU or EFTA, with our heritage on-premise software, will also not be exposed to the risk of tariffs. In this scenario the export has already been performed and where license extensions are being provided, whilst you migrate to our new SaaS products, this would remain tariff free.
Data privacy and the GDPR
We understand the importance of Data Privacy and the GDPR. As a Cloud service we are offering our customers the assurance that data will remain in the EU through our utilisation of the Microsoft Azure platform. The Microsoft Cloud enables us to deploy our software and provide assurances that software, and the data contained within it, will remain within geographic boundaries. For our customers in the EU and EFTA we can guarantee that the data within the product will remain within the EU geographic region.
In terms of legislation, regardless of the EU exit scenario, the UK is aligned fully with the GDPR. Whilst in a no deal scenario the EU directives would no longer have direct effect once the UK was outside the EU; the GDPR itself has already been incorporated into UK law as the Data Protection Act 2018. Official information from the UK government can be found here.
In a no deal scenario the EU would need to formally recognise the UK as having adequate local legislation. This should be seen as a formality given the status of legislative equivalence between the EU and UK. Please refer to the following resource for further information.
