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Nervous game in the negotiations for a trade agreement after Brexit: on Friday the parties again separated without result. Now the bosses should fix it on the weekend. Will that work?
Negotiations between the EU and Britain on a post-Brexit trade deal have reached a dead end. Negotiators from both sides announced late Friday that they had agreed to pause the talks due to “significant differences of opinion.” To avoid failure, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson and EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen will deliberate together on Saturday afternoon.
Britain left the EU on February 1. However, it will remain in the EU internal market and in the customs union until the end of the year. In reality, both parties wanted to use this transition phase to negotiate a trade agreement. The talks have barely advanced for months. Meanwhile, the time for a timely ratification of a possible agreement before January 1 is extremely short.
“Conditions for an agreement not delivered”
EU negotiator Michel Barnier has been holding talks with his British colleague David Frost in London since last weekend. “After a week of intense negotiations in London,” both parties “agreed today that the conditions for an agreement were not in place,” Barnier and Frost said in identical statements Friday night.
The reason was “significant differences of opinion” in negotiations on fair competition, control of a future agreement and the fishing rights of EU fishers in British waters, he said. According to UK media, British negotiators complained about the alleged new EU demands. This slowed down the conversations.
However, London had previously announced that it would reinstate controversial clauses in its internal market law, which is due to return to the House of Commons on Monday. The bill was the subject of violent outrage in Brussels because it challenged parts of the exit agreement that had already been concluded. Both negotiating parties would now brief their superiors on the status, he said on Friday, before Johnson and von der Leyen discussed the situation on Saturday afternoon.
“Then we have no deal”
EU Council President Charles Michel warned on Friday that negotiations would fail in the event of a veto by member states. “Member states will have to decide, as will the British side,” Michel said in Brussels. “Member states have to say yes or no, and if either side of the table says no, then we don’t have an agreement.”
Friday in London: EU chief negotiator Michel Barnier and his team are on their way to negotiate with the British side. (Source: Kirsty Wigglesworth / AP / dpa)
More recently, French President Emmanuel Macron said that he would only agree to a treaty if the long-term interests of his country were preserved. European Secretary of State Clément Beaune told Europe 1 radio station on Friday: “If there is an agreement that is not good, we would oppose it.” France will use its veto if certain conditions are not met, especially as regards fishing.
Some member states suspect that Germany, which currently holds the EU presidency, definitely wants to push through a deal because of its important economic ties with Britain. Government spokesman Steffen Seibert said in Berlin in the morning that the federal government wanted a deal, “but not at any price.”
Pizza negotiation marathon
During the week, the British media had already informed the negotiating teams about euphoric pizza deliveries late at night. This was taken as a sign that an agreement could be reached. A breakthrough is hardly expected before Monday. If no agreement is reached by then, the UK Single Market Act threatens to seriously disrupt the negotiating environment.
In the event that no agreement is reached, the envisaged law aims to undermine parts of the EU exit agreement concluded last fall. The House of Lords removed the controversial clauses last month, but the government said they should now be reinserted.
The so-called Northern Ireland Protocol, which aims to guarantee an open border between British Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland, which is part of the EU, is affected. If such provisions are applied in law, a border between Northern Ireland and Ireland would be unavoidable. This would make a new escalation of violence in Northern Ireland more likely. Until the conclusion of the Good Friday Agreement in 1998, the majority of Catholic supporters of a united Ireland and predominantly Protestant supporters of a union with Great Britain fought a civil war that lasted decades.
