Brexit: Boris Johnson again urges EU for trade deal

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson in London on October 12, 2020. Toby Melville / Pool Photo via AP

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Boris Johnson is due to meet with European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen on Wednesday in a new effort to unblock post-Brexit trade negotiations. 

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With our correspondent in London,

Muriel Delcroix 

Boris Johnson may well say to the British that the United Kingdom " 

can very well live with a

" no deal "", he has redoubled his efforts in recent days to signal to Europeans that a trade agreement would still be welcome.

The Prime Minister had made the summit of October 15 and 16 in Brussels a deadline and clearly wants to maintain the pressure on the negotiations, although the Europeans have always set themselves rather at the end of October to reach an agreement.

On Tuesday, EU negotiator Michel Barnier also remarked, not without irony, that this was the third unilateral deadline imposed by Boris Johnson and that “there was 

still time

 ” while the negotiations remained difficult .

For Michel Barnier,

despite a more “

 constructive

 ”

tone than

before, the sticking points persist on fishing, the conditions of fair competition or the governance of the future agreement.

The United Kingdom is seeking for its part to enter a short tunnel of negotiations during which Downing Street and the Europeans would leave their two negotiators free to find solutions to resolve these problems.

But this phase does not yet seem on the table on the EU side and London is getting impatient.

A source in the UK government accused Brussels of resorting to an old tactic designed

to drag out negotiations

and get the UK to compromise, regretting a lot of time wasted and calling on Europeans to "step 

up the pace and be creative

 ”.

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