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Wednesday December 09, 2020
New deadline until Sunday
No progress on the Brexit dinner
Britain’s Prime Minister Johnson and EU Commission Chairman von der Leyen did not make the breakthrough. However, talks on a Brexit trade pact should continue, the decision should be made on Sunday. But they made progress.
In the dispute over the Brexit trade pact, the European Union and Great Britain are given a new deadline until Sunday. After a three-hour conversation between Prime Minister Boris Johnson and EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen on Wednesday night in Brussels, British government circles said the differences were still very large. It is not yet clear whether an agreement will be reached. But the talks should continue in the coming days.
Johnson and von der Leyen had agreed to have a dinner in Brussels to discuss the remaining points of contention in the negotiations on a trade deal for the time after the end of the Brexit transition phase. It was the third conversation between the two since EU negotiator Michel Barnier and his British colleague David Frost announced last Friday that their negotiating mandate had reached a dead end. After two phone calls had not been as successful, the personal meeting should now give a boost to the negotiations.
Time is running out. This Thursday and Friday, the heads of state and government of the EU will meet for their last summit of the year. The contract should be in force before December 31, because then the transition phase of Brexit will expire. If an agreement is reached, it should be ratified in the European Parliament and the Council of Ministers of the EU. As it stands, at least one vote on the trade pact is also expected in the British Parliament.
The same three problems remain
Britain left the EU at the end of January, but everything will remain the same until the turn of the year. Negotiations will take place later. Without a contract, tariffs and other trade barriers have threatened since January 1. It is feared that this could lead to long traffic jams on the English side of the English Channel and empty shelves in supermarkets. The economy expects great turmoil. The remaining three issues, fisheries, fair competition and the issue of the enforceability of agreements, have been the same for months.
There was at least one progress on Tuesday: the British government and the EU Commission agreed on the implementation of the Northern Ireland Protocol to the Brexit Agreement. This largely eliminates the biggest worry in the event that a deal is not reached. The protocol aims to ensure that there is no firm border between British Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland, a member of the EU. In this case, a worsening of the conflict was expected in the region of the former civil war. London had agreed to remove or change controversial passages in a bill.
