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Updated 21 minutes ago
BREXIT NEGOTIATORS LORD Frost and Michel Barnier spoke today in an effort to revive trade talks, even as the British side hardens its rhetoric with discussions still ongoing.
Negotiations are in limbo after a summit of European Union leaders last week failed to produce a breakthrough and Prime Minister Boris Johnson tipped off the UK to prepare for a no-deal outcome.
Downing Street emphasized that if there is no agreement by the end of the year, when the current transition agreements end, the UK will not return to the negotiating table in 2021.
The prime minister’s official spokesperson said: “If the EU changes its position, we will be ready to talk to them.
“But they must be willing to discuss the detailed legal text of a treaty in all areas.”
EU leaders must also commit to a resolution that ‘respects the sovereignty and independence of the UK’.
“If not, we will end the transition period in Australian terms,” the spokesman said.
Trade Secretary Alok Sharma has admitted that the difference between the outcome of a no-trade deal and “Australian terms” is a matter of “semantics”.
He told LBC: “The Australia agreement is the agreement you have with countries where you work predominantly on the basis of the WTO (World Trade Organization).”
When asked if “Australia deal” is another term for a no deal situation, Sharma said: “It depends, you can use the phrase ‘no deal’ but the point is there is a deal.”
He added: “It is a matter of semantics after all, of course.
“There are two very clear approaches to this: we can go the way of doing the kind of agreement that the EU has with Australia, the other is that we can do it the way of Canada.”
Sharma said: “We have always been very clear that we want to go with a Canadian-style trade deal.”
Meanwhile, face-to-face talks took place in London this morning between Cabinet Minister Michael Gove and his counterpart in the joint UK-EU committee, Maros Sefcovic, to discuss issues related to the Brexit divorce deal.
Sefcovic said it was a “very constructive meeting” and that the EU will work until “the last minute” to get a trade deal.
The main obstacles remain the access of EU vessels to UK fishing grounds and the “level playing field” to ensure fair competition, including state subsidies that the government could try to award to companies.
The events came as the British government launched a “time is running out” campaign urging companies to prepare for the end of the transition period on December 31, regardless of whether there is a trade deal.
The companies, increasingly concerned about the high tariffs of a no-deal exit, called on both sides to find a compromise to reach an agreement.
The Deputy Director General of the Confederation of British Industry, Josh Hardie, warned of an “unprecedented hat-trick of challenges” from the first wave of coronavirus, its resurgence and “uncertainty over the UK’s trade relationship with the EU” .
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Meanwhile, the five Anglican archbishops of the United Kingdom weighed in to criticize the Government’s controversial new Brexit legislation for setting a “disastrous precedent”, in a letter to the Financial Times ahead of the Lords debate.
Led by the Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby, they said the UK’s internal market bill has “enormous moral, political and legal consequences” by paving the way for a violation of international law by invalidating parts of the Withdrawal Agreement with Brussels. .
Issue 10 urged his peers, including Church of England bishops sitting in the Lords, to back the UK’s internal market bill.
“We consider the UKIM bill vital,” the prime minister’s official spokesman said.
“It was passed with the support of the House of Commons and we believe it is a necessary legal safety net to protect the integrity of the UK domestic market.”
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