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Shortly before 1:00 p.m. on Sunday, December 13, the President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, confirmed that negotiations with the United Kingdom on the new trade agreement will continue indefinitely. The decision was agreed upon after a phone call with British Prime Minister Boris Johnson.
We had a helpful call with @BorisJohnson this morning.
We agree that the talks will continue.https: //t.co/rZpN4PmS1i
– Ursula von der Leyen (@vonderleyen) December 13, 2020
Today was formally the last day that the United Kingdom and the European Union agreed to conclude the negotiations on the new trade agreement, which should enter into force on January 1, 2021, when the United Kingdom will leave the Union permanently. The negotiations have been ongoing for days, but they are essentially firm and both sides have made it clear several times that they could hardly reach an agreement.
Last Wednesday, December 9, it was decided to give the negotiators time until today. Now a new extension has been decided. It is unclear if any progress has been made. Neither von der Leyen nor the journalists who follow the negotiations more closely have spoken of a closer engagement.
The negotiations are progressing with difficulty, especially in the so-called level playing fieldIn other words, the rules that should prevent British companies from competing unfairly with European ones. In recent days, European negotiators had asked the British counterpart to introduce a clause to oblige the United Kingdom to keep its environmental and labor standards up to date in the medium to long term: but British negotiators had accused the European Union of really wanting to keep the country fully aligned with current European standards. It is not a small dispute: the negotiation serves to set the rules of the game for a substantial part of the economic activities of both parties.
Negotiators are also discussing access to British waters for European fishermen. The European Union has made it clear that if British fishermen were denied access to their vessels, they would not be granted privileged access to sell their products on European markets. The UK maintains that what happens in its own waters cannot be decided by now external entities such as the European Union. The British government also confirmed on Saturday that the navy is preparing to patrol the waters in case a deal is not reached. The statement, which ended up in all British newspapers, appeared to be an attempt to put more pressure on the European authorities.
The third point in the negotiations on which there does not appear to be a solid agreement yet concerns the mechanisms that the UK and the European Union should adopt to resolve legal disputes.
Times are getting tighter. Any agreement must be examined by the legal advisers of both parties and formally approved by the European Parliament, in plenary session. Some experts believe that the agreement should be ratified by individual member states, as has happened in the past with several other large trade agreements. If an agreement were reached around Christmas, say several observers, neither the European Parliament nor governments and national assemblies would have time to examine it carefully.
As widely predicted, Brexit is taking much longer to achieve than its supporters had anticipated. Formally, the United Kingdom left the European Union on February 1, 2020, and until December 31, the country will be in a transition phase in which it will remain in the European Union without being able to participate in its decision-making bodies. . The British government was convinced that it could use these ten months to reach a trade agreement, but thanks to the pandemic and some very deep divergences, known for years, the negotiations have been blocked for months.
It doesn’t help that Boris Johnson has been arguing for weeks that a no-deal exit has some positives, despite the dire economic consequences it would suffer in the short term, and that it is receiving backing from much of the Conservative Party and British tabloids. . correct, very influential in the British public debate.
In the event of a breakdown in negotiations, controls and tariffs on goods would be reactivated immediately at the borders between the United Kingdom and the European Union, and inconvenience is expected in all important sectors of British public life.
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