[ad_1]
Boris Johnson and Ursula von der Leyen’s decision to keep talking was, despite the saber rattling of recent days, always more likely than to declare the negotiations dead. But the tone of their joint statement marked such a dramatic shift to persuade all but the most hopelessly pessimistic that there is now a deal in the cards.
Describing their phone call as “helpful,” the two leaders acknowledged that there were important unresolved issues, but agreed that it was okay to “go the extra mile” to reach an agreement. Gone was the invocation of the “remaining significant differences” and they did not set any new deadline for reaching an agreement.
Talks in Brussels have focused on a level playing field guarantees of fair competition and specifically on how to manage the divergence between standards as Britain moves further away from the EU regulatory system. Both parties have agreed that they will maintain current environmental and labor standards, but the EU has demanded a mechanism to address any competitive gap that opens if one side improves its standards and the other does not.
Both parties seem to have moved with the EU accepting that any such mechanism must be reciprocal and Britain agreed that there could be some “rebalancing” through the application of tariffs. Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab suggested Sunday morning that Britain was open to retaliatory tariffs on specific sectors affected by a divergence in standards, but not to a “nuclear” option of blanket tariffs.
The other big unsolved problem is that of fisheries, where the two sides are still widely separated in terms of the access that EU vessels should continue to have to British waters. The issue is economically insignificant but politically important both in Great Britain and in some European coastal states, especially France.
But if the two sides make a breakthrough on level playing field, fishing is essentially a numbers game that could be solved in a complex calculation involving fish, money and time.
Britain’s threats to use gunboats to scare away French fishermen will help reassure the most enthusiastic Brexiters and grace a likely post-deal national narrative about Johnson’s toughness forcing the EU to give in to his demands.
[ad_2]