Part of 1. 1. Questions to the First Minister – in the Senedd at 1:41 pm on 12 July 2016.
The leader of UKIP seems to be saying that, with the UK out of the EU, we need to get Germany to do the work for us in the EU, which is a curious scenario, may I say? The only model that exists that offers free access to the single market is the European economic area model. There is no other model. That has with it, of course, connotations in terms of the free movement of people, but there’s nothing else on the table at the moment. For me, access to the single market is an absolute red line as far as Wales is concerned. He asked a question about our relationship with Germany. Germany is a major investor in the Welsh economy, we have good relationships with German commercial organisations, and one of the issues that I am examining now is how we beef up our offices overseas, whether we should look to increase staffing in the existing offices, or whether we should open new offices. It’s a difficult balance to strike. We have had work done by the Public Policy Institute for Wales on that and we’ve listened to Ireland. They have a similar dilemma to us because of their limited resources and their size as well. But we will look to increase the Welsh presence now, as we have done over the past few years, in markets that are important to us.