Prime Minister Boris Johnson has said he believes post-Brexit trade talks may stutter as early as next month after a meeting with EU leaders saw the two sides pledge to speed up negotiations.
Optimist Johnson emerged from an hour-long teleconference with European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and other leaders to reveal that he had told them to “put a tiger in the tank” and add “a little punch” to three months of talks.
“I don’t think we are so far apart,” he said. “The sooner we can do it, the better, and we see no reason why you shouldn’t be doing this in July …
“I don’t want to see (the talks) continue until fall, winter.”
The two sides said earlier in a joint statement that “new impetus” is needed, after four rounds of negotiations and few results.
The leaders also agreed to seek a possible “early agreement” on the main principles of the agreement, recognizing that negotiations could run out of time.
It was Johnson’s first personal involvement in the talks, which began just weeks after Britain left the European Union on January 31, after 47 years in the European project.
He won an electoral victory in December of last year on a promise to “advance Brexit” but is under pressure due to the economic fallout from the coronavirus epidemic.
Businesses are also demanding more certainty about the new cross-Channel trade rules once Britain leaves the single market and will stop adhering to the Brussels rules on December 31.
The head of the Council of the EU, Charles Michel, said on Twitter that they were “ready to put a tiger in the tank but not to buy a pig in one shot”.
“Battle of strategies”
The two sides hoped that the intervention of Johnson and von der Leyen could revive the procedures, which mainly took place online due to the global pandemic.
Johnson, British chief negotiator David Frost and his European counterpart Michel Barnier have all caught the virus.
Negotiators complain that the format has not lent itself to compromise and finding common ground on thorny issues.
Additional pressure came after Britain officially said on Friday that it would not seek to extend the post-Brexit transition by one or two years – something it could have done under the terms of the agreement. divorce that Johnson signed last year.
Repeated stumbling blocks include Britain’s refusal to accept EU calls to commit to respecting European standards overseen by EU law to maintain open access to the single market.
Brussels says it would maintain a “level playing field”.
“A level playing field is essential,” said Michel.
“We cannot accept the UK’s attempts to select parts of our single market benefits,” said Barnier in a speech on Thursday.
The EU is also demanding guaranteed access to British waters for European fishing fleets, which Britain has so far refused.
Instead, they proposed annual talks on catch quotas.
“The cherry picking is on the side of Brussels,” complained to German public radio Greg Hands, the British Minister for Trade, citing the case of fishing rights.
Britain wants to maintain strong trade links with the EU’s largest single market in the world – but London will not recognize any mention of EU law or court decisions in the agreement, seeing this as a violation of sovereignty.
Johnson’s government also refuses to discuss many issues beyond trade that Europeans would like to have linked to the same deal, including security, diplomacy, research and data flows.
“Early understanding”
Opinions differ on how quickly an agreement should be reached.
The EU has extended the deadline to October 31, while Britain has said this summer is the last chance.
Monday’s statement seems to indicate that the two sides agreed that some sort of tentative agreement might be acceptable given time constraints.
Intensified talks, he said, “should include, if possible, quickly reaching agreement on the principles behind any agreement”.
An agreement in principle could be enough to avoid the harmful consequences of the lack of agreement on December 31 and to effectively extend negotiations beyond this year.
Failure to reach a trade agreement will result in tariffs, customs and regulatory controls and other obstacles – effectively removing Britain from the European supply chain.
(With the exception of the title, this story was not edited by GalacticGaming staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
