BRUSSELS, June 15 — British Prime Minister Boris Johnson will meet EU chiefs by video link today to try to breathe new life into stalled post-Brexit trade talks, with both sides entrenched in long-held positions.
The conference with European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen and European Council chief Charles Michel will review progress in the talks on future EU-UK relations.
It is the first time Johnson has personally taken part in the talks, which began three months ago, just weeks after Britain left the European Union after 47 years in the European project.
While expectations are low for the long-planned meeting, the unpredictable Johnson, who has recently recovered from a bout of coronavirus, has EU negotiators on the lookout for surprises.
“The High Level Meeting was always envisaged as a moment to push the negotiations forward,” a UK official said.
“We now need to get this resolved and deliver certainty for businesses at home and in the EU as soon as possible.”
Britain and the EU have held four rounds of talks on how to organise their ties after December 31, when the UK leaves the single market and stops adhering to Brussels’ rules after an 11-month transition.
So far they have achieved little, giving today’s meeting added significance. London and Brussels have already agreed to intensify negotiations, with mainly in-person talks throughout July and August.
A European source close to the negotiations said the Johnson meeting was intended to “give a political impetus to the scheduled negotiations and break the deadlock. Or not.”
Talks between EU negotiator Michel Barnier and his British counterpart David Frost have mostly taken place online because of the coronavirus outbreak.
Negotiators complain that the format has not lent itself to making compromises and finding common ground on thorny issues.
“So far we haven’t had actual negotiations, just an exchange of views,” an EU diplomat told AFP. “It’s a battle of strategies at this point.”
Added pressure came after Britain on Friday formally declared that it would not seek to extend the post-Brexit transition by one or two years, something it could have done according to the terms of the divorce deal Johnson signed last year.
‘Cherry-picking’ accusations
The same intractable issues have hampered the talks since the start.
Britain has firmly rejected calls by the EU to commit to European standards overseen by EU law to keep open access to the single market — something Brussels says would maintain a “level playing field”.
“We cannot accept the UK’s attempts to cherry-pick parts of our single market benefits,” Barnier said in a speech on Thursday.
The EU is also asking for continued guaranteed access to British waters for European fishing fleets, an idea Britain has so far refused. Instead, they have proposed annual talks on quotas for catches.
“The cherry picking is on the side of Brussels,” complained Greg Hands, the UK’s junior minister for trade, to German public radio, citing the case of fishing rights.
British negotiators are eager to keep deep business ties to the EU single market, the world’s biggest — but they will not recognise any mention of EU law or court decisions in the deal, seeing that as a violation of sovereignty.
Johnson’s government also refuses to discuss many topics beyond trade that the Europeans would like to have bound to the same deal.
London has side-stepped security, diplomacy, research and data flows, to the frustration of Barnier and his team.
Tight timetable
Opinions differ on how soon a deal needs to be struck in order to give companies the visibility they need on the terms of cross-Channel trade from January 1, 2021.
Barnier has said the deal needs to be done by October 31 to leave enough time to be ratified by member states and the European Parliament.
British officials believe a deal is needed sooner, and Barnier and Frost have both committed to participate in all aspects of the talks throughout the summer.
Failure to agree one will lead to tariffs, customs and regulatory checks and other obstacles — in effect removing Britain from Europe’s supply chain. — AFP
