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Ursula von der Leyen described her dinner with Boris Johnson on Wednesday as “lively and interesting” but left both parties feeling depressed about the future of the Brexit talks. No new ideas emerged from the meeting, so although David Frost and Michel Barnier have a few more days to negotiate, their leaders gave them nothing new to talk about.
Every twist and turn in the negotiations over the past two weeks has been a kind of Rorschach test, open to wildly different interpretations depending on whether you are optimistic or pessimistic. Pessimists saw the breakdown of talks between Frost and Barnier last Friday as the end of the road, while optimists saw it as an opportunity for political directors to add new momentum.
This week’s agreement on how to implement the Northern Ireland protocol caused Britain to remove treaty breach clauses from the Internal Market Bill, which stood in the way of a deal. But its removal has also lowered the cost of a no-deal option for Johnson because it can assure Joe Biden that it will not undermine the peace process in Northern Ireland.
The three sticking points in the negotiations remain the same: fishing; level playing field; and governance. But attention has focused on a specific element of a level playing field guarantees: the so-called ratchet clause.
No regression
Downing Street confirmed on Thursday that Britain accepts the principle of non-regression, which means that it cannot lower its labor, environmental or consumer standards. But the EU wants to go further, demanding that if it raises its standards and Britain does not, it should be able to impose tariffs on relevant British goods if the emerging gap creates an unfair competitive advantage.
“Our friends in the EU are now insisting that if they pass a new law in the future that we in this country do not comply with or do not follow, they should have the automatic right to punish and retaliate,” Johnson. he told the House of Commons on Wednesday.
“I don’t think those are terms that any prime minister of this country should accept.”
Speaking in the Bundestag a few hours earlier, Angela Merkel also identified the ratchet clause as the biggest obstacle in the way of a deal, but characterized it very differently.
“Currently we have more or less the same legal system, a harmonized legal system, but over the years the legal systems will diverge in terms of environmental law, labor law, health law, everywhere,” he said.
“And how will the other party react to this, when the legal situation in the European Union or in Great Britain changes? And we can’t just say that we won’t talk about this, but rather that we need not only a level playing field for today, but also for the next few days. To do this, we need to find agreements on how each party can react when the other changes their legal situation ”.
Britain complains that the EU envisions a unilateral system that would allow it to automatically apply lightning tariffs to Britain, but that would not allow London to retaliate. Neither side sees room for compromise, but both agree that if they can unlock this issue, they will be able to reach an agreement on fisheries and governance.
Salvation fantasy
The British side has been reporting against Barnier in recent days, accusing him of hardening the EU’s position and an inflexible and uncooperative approach. In the current salvation fantasy of British negotiators, Merkel’s role as a benevolent Valkyrie arriving to rescue the talks has been taken over by Stéphanie Riso, von der Leyen’s deputy chief of staff.
Barnier’s former chief of staff, the French economist is widely admired in Brussels and has become an increasingly influential figure on the committee chairman’s team, playing a central role in designing the $ 750 billion coronavirus bailout package. euros earlier this year. As Von der Leyen’s representative on the Brexit negotiating team for the past few weeks, Riso gained Frost’s trust and the British side was reassured by seeing her at dinner on Wednesday.
Faced with Frost, a retired middle-ranking diplomat, Barnier is the apotheosis of a 300-year-old French bureaucratic tradition dating back to Colbert. Colleagues say Riso has the experience and audacity of vision to bring a fresh perspective to the talks, but Barnier retains the trust of member states who will make the last call and Britain’s hostile reporting against him is deeply reckless.
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