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Here we go again.
There is less than a month to go until the UK leaves the single market and the EU customs union, having officially left the bloc in January.
Things seemed to have exploded this weekend, so what’s going on?
In short, since the trade talks began almost 10 months ago, the main obstacles have been the same: a level playing field provisions, a dispute mechanism and fishing.
Now, with just a few weeks to go before the transition period is over, which was a deal where the UK could have one foot in the European Union and one foot out to give it time to prepare to leave, those three issues still haven’t. have been fully resolved.
More than 95% of the EU-UK trade agreement has been agreed and written into legal text.
An outburst on Friday saw UK chief negotiator David Frost and EU chief negotiator Michel Barnier jointly announce that they would “pause” the negotiations.
The last stumbling block in Brexit negotiations was always going to end up being carried out by political leaders, as happened in the first round of Brexit negotiations.
A breakthrough was made on the Northern Ireland Protocol after then-Taoiseach Leo Varadkar met UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson in Cheshire, after months of stalemate between negotiating teams.
In this case, the negotiators gave in to Johnson and the president of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen.
Both leaders spoke yesterday, issued a statement saying that loopholes persist, but that negotiations in Brussels would resume today and the two would speak again tomorrow night.
Ursula von der Leyen, President of the European Commission.
Source: Julien Warnand
What is happening here is that political leaders are being asked to give negotiators a little more leeway to reach a final agreement.
The three main obstacles that have held back the talks have been:
- Equal conditions provisions: It’s about the EU and the UK agreeing to the same set of rules on things like workplace standards and workers’ rights; environmental standards; and state aid rules, so that EU or UK companies do not gain an unfair advantage.
- Governance: If the UK or the EU have been accused of violating the rules of any trade agreement they might reach, who will decide if this accusation is fair and what would be the punishment for violating the rules of the agreement? The UK does not want this to be the Court of Justice of the European Union, which one Conservative MP said would be like “the EU marking its own duties”.
- Fisheries: There is a dispute over how many EU fishing vessels the UK will allow in its waters and how many fish it will allow them to catch. The UK wants to “regain control of its waters”, but the EU maintains that European vessels have fished in British waters long before joining the European Union. You can read the concerns of Irish fishermen about the fishing regime here.
In recent weeks, gossip from politicians has suggested that progress has been made on the level playing field, possibly the most contentious of the three.
But reports of the confidential talks have suggested that the French government’s demands over the rights to UK fishing waters may have created a new problem this week, just as it was about to reach a deal.
Any of the leaders of the 27 EU member states can veto a final trade deal. Giving them access to the details of the deal before this vote takes place ensures that everyone agrees, which seems to be where this last minute inconvenience arose.
“We know that 100% access to fishing waters in the UK maritime zone has ended,” European Affairs Minister Clement Beaune told the Journal du Dimanche.
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“But we need durable access. The British cannot have full access to our single EU market and exclude fish. “
Conservative MP Andrew Bridgen suggested today on RTÉ Radio One that the UK government would grant this “durable” access, although there has been some suggestion of a time-limited trial of various fishing arrangements.
The 27 EU leaders will meet in Brussels on Thursday for a two-day summit planned to address their own budget dispute, but which will now be clouded once again by post-Brexit trade talks.
If there is no trade agreement between the EU and the UK, trade between the two nations would have high tariffs set by the World Trade Organization. This could have a major impact on Ireland’s lucrative beef and dairy industries.
But if the UK were to revert to a non-free trade relationship with the EU as of January 1, trade negotiations between the two regions would continue into the new year as some kind of trade relationship would need to be established due to the geographic proximity and close relationships that already existed when it was an EU member state.
Today, Foreign Minister Simon Coveney suggested today that if Westminster passes the controversial Internal Market bill or the most recent tax bill, which contravenes the provisions of the Withdrawal Agreement, it does not see how the European Parliament could approve an EU-UK. trade agreement.
Both the House of Commons and the European Parliament would have to vote to accept any trade agreement between the EU and the UK before it can be ratified and come into force.
But Coveney also said that if a trade deal is reached, problems related to those laws “may find a way to go away,” suggesting that the EU is less concerned about those bills than it is about reaching an agreement, that it is still the most likely outcome.
Current negotiations may rumble from today until Thursday’s European Council meeting, which would give the UK time to withdraw its two controversial bills.
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