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EU member states sometimes rely on Ireland as the interpreter of the British, with special insight due to the long and intimate Dublin-London relationship, and authority as the state most affected by Brexit, apart from the UK itself.
Taoiseach Micheál Martin will take on this role of Brit Whisperer when he addresses the European Council this week to tell his colleagues 26 that, contrary to the impression received in some continental capitals, Prime Minister Boris Johnson does want a deal.
The British government’s outspoken declaration that it is prepared to violate international law has also made it difficult to get the kind of treatment it wants to get.
Some EU governments saw the internal market bill as a deliberate wrecking ball and wondered if abandoning the negotiations was the only logical answer. Can a new agreement be reached with a counterpart who at the same time cancels the last one?
But Dublin has been reassured by London, and by the energetically optimistic twist issued from Downing Street this week stating that a breakthrough is near, which is taken as a sign of commitment to the talks, and surely not as the act of a government. determined to have a Big Bang on January 1st.
This means that the introduction of the Internal Market Act by London was a mistake.
U-turn in London
Logistically, you’ve added a complication when time is short. The British government will have to withdraw the articles that violate the withdrawal agreement in order to sign a new agreement – the EU is unanimous on this. Therefore, London will now have to politically manage a U-turn on the bill, as well as compromises that were always unavoidable in the hot spots of state aid, fisheries and governance.
The British government’s outspoken declaration that it is prepared to violate international law has also made the kind of treatment it wants harder to come by.
UK negotiators have long sought an agreement that leaves them some leeway and has faith that it is not necessary to go into all the details because their rules are similar to those of the EU and the British are generally a good group. This type of argument was key to the British opposition to including a commitment to the European Convention on Human Rights in the agreement, to name one example.
Caution turns to paranoia
The internal market bill burned any prospect of such leniency from Brussels, following a long erosion of confidence since 2016. This has direct implications for the talks: This week, negotiators have spent 14 hours crouched in talks on “governance” , a contentious area covers how future disagreements between the UK and the EU should be addressed and which authority should arbitrate them. If EU negotiators were wary of the UK’s calls for leniency on this matter before, they are now completely paranoid.
The UK side brought new documents to this week’s talks that were reported as harbingers of a breakthrough but were quickly rejected by Brussels. The reason given is compelling: insufficient details on “governance”, on how the EU could make Britain deliver on its promises.
The initiation of infringement procedures by the European Commission is both predictable, inevitable and a negative sign. It was predictable because it is the course of action outlined in the withdrawal agreement and was pointed out by the commission’s vice president, Maros Sefcovic, last month. It was inevitable because the Internal Market Act continues its passage by Westminster with its offending articles intact. It is a negative sign because as long as it persists, an agreement cannot be reached.
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