Brexit: negotiations on the trade agreement are deadlocked

After a week of fruitless negotiations, tensions between London and Brussels have escalated over Brexit. "I have invited the UK to change tactics if they really want an agreement with us," EU chief negotiator Michel Barnier warned on Friday 15 May at a press conference in Brussels.

"There is still today, to tell you the truth, a real misunderstanding" with London, added the French. "We are ready for all options", including the "no deal" (editor's note), he warned.

At the same time, his British counterpart David Frost criticized the "little progress" made and also demanded "a change of approach" from Brussels before the next discussions.

Here is my statement for the UK following the conclusion of the third Round of talks with the EU today. pic.twitter.com/fKtTFV72DE

Talks are scheduled to resume on June 1, and any extension of the time to agree on the new relationship must be requested before July 1.

Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who won the legislative elections in December on his promise to "achieve Brexit" at all costs, categorically rules out extending discussions beyond the end of 2020. The British want this be finally "settled", he repeated this week.

An agreement without customs duties or quota proposed

The UK officially left the EU on January 31, after 47 years of a stormy marriage, but for the time being and until the end of this transitional period, it continues to follow the rules without having a voice. in the chapter.

In the absence of an agreement and extension, trade would be governed by the rules of the World Trade Organization (WTO), brutally erecting new trade barriers and causing significant costs for importing companies on both sides and delays in the border.

To avoid such a scenario, Brussels is proposing an agreement without customs duties or quotas in exchange for concessions deemed unacceptable by London, in particular alignment with certain European standards and wide access to British waters for European fishermen.

In the absence of success, the British authorities say they are ready to compare the framework governing trade between the EU and Australia, which almost amounts to WTO rules.

"It is perfectly feasible and satisfactory," assured a British source close to the negotiations on Friday, again rejecting an extension of the transition period: "Even if we were offered it we would not accept it".

"Maintain freedom of regulation" after confinement

Many believed that Boris Johnson would back off and bend an extension due to the Covid-19 pandemic, which forced negotiators to chat by video and caused a historic economic crisis in the United Kingdom, rendering little desirable a new shock.

But the pandemic, for some, has also reinforced the argument that the United Kingdom, the second most bereaved country in the world (33,000 dead), must be free from its decisions.

A source close to British negotiators told AFP that London will not want to be tied to any of the long-term European recovery measures, over which it will have no say. The British government, on the contrary, will want to set up its own mechanisms, reinforcing its opposition to Brussels' requests to include common standards in a trade agreement.

"If the UK is to be able to respond effectively and quickly to the economic downturn following containment, it must retain as much regulatory freedom as possible," said Leila Simona Talani, professor of international political economy at King's College London.

According to her, the coronavirus "makes an extension less viable and the outcome of a lack of agreement more likely", at least from the British point of view.

There is also the cynical vision that the consequences of a "no deal" would in any case be reduced compared to the economic and social disaster which begins.

Last minute deal?

Mujtaba Rahman, expert at Eurasia Group, believes that Boris Johnson will not request an extension because he is counting on the possibility of a last-minute agreement "as December approaches, seen in Downing Street as the real deadline. "

"The Prime Minister is ready to take the gamble that the EU will feel more under pressure than the United Kingdom, in the world of the new coronavirus, to conclude an agreement," he added in an analysis note. 

The EU is used to last-minute deals, and a European source stresses to AFP that "the ingenuity of civil servants should never be underestimated when it comes to finding imaginative solutions".

With AFP

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