[ad_1]
Negotiations on the future relationship between Britain and the EU are stalled. To get them going, London would have to rethink its positions. But it doesn’t look like that.
Brussels / London. In June, the world looked very different: after the meeting between Britain’s Prime Minister Boris Johnson and Ursula von der Leyen, President of the EU Commission, there were high hopes that London and Brussels would seize the summer to sketch one thing. Summarize future economic and commercial agreements. Furthermore, on July 1, Germany, a heavyweight in European politics with a strong interest in the British, assumed the six-month Presidency of the EU Council. The framework conditions for a conciliatory end to membership in the British Union could not have been more favorable.
But, as so often in the Brexit saga, things turned out very differently. When the hot phase of the negotiations begins on Monday (this time in London), the EU’s chief negotiator, Michel Barnier, and his British counterpart, David Frost, will meet in the most unfavorable circumstances. Because during the summer months there was no de facto progress. Britain and the EU remain irreconcilable when it comes to access to the EU-27 common internal market that the British should have after the end of the post-Brexit transition period on December 31. Even the generally confident Brexit watcher Mujtaba Rahman of the think tank Eurasia Group was pessimistic yesterday: The probability of a deal is still 55 percent, Rahman wrote, but is falling rapidly.
To get out of the negative spiral, a breakthrough is required in the coming weeks. It doesn’t look like this right now. The EU negotiating team that withdrew yesterday to prepare for the next round should see the matter in a similar light.
