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On Wednesday evening, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and British Prime Minister Boris Johnson met in Brussels to try to resolve the deadlock in negotiations on the new trade agreement between the UK and the European Union that should enter into force from 1 January 2021, when the United Kingdom will leave the Union forever.
The negotiations have more or less stalled for months and Wednesday’s meeting served to understand if there was room for them to continue. At the end of the meeting, which lasted about three hours, the two leaders announced that they would give their negotiators time until Sunday, December 13, to try to reach an agreement. “At the end of the weekend we will make a decision,” von der Leyen said.
From the information that emerges, the discussion was not very productive. In a press release, the British government said the conversation was “frank” – a diplomatic expression to say it was agitated – and that in the end “significant differences of views persist between the two sides.” “It is difficult to imagine what could change between now and Sunday to change the equation,” a European diplomatic source told the Financial times.
Another sign that the meeting was of little use is the fact that von der Leyen and Johnson did not issue a joint statement, as they did several other times in such cases and even four days ago, at the end of the phone call in which it was decided to hold yesterday’s meeting. In its statement, the British government seems to predict the failure of the next negotiations: “the prime minister is determined to experiment with all the solutions to reach a fair agreement, but each compromise must respect British independence and sovereignty.”
The points on which the distance remains are three, the same for months: the so-called level playing field, cThey are the standards that the UK will not be able to lower in the hope of attracting foreign investment and unfair competition with the European Union, the dispute resolution mechanism and access to British waters for European fishermen. It seems that the most difficult to solve is the first: European negotiators have asked the United Kingdom to introduce a clause that forces the country to keep up to date its environmental and labor standards, but British negotiators accuse the European Union of wanting to maintain the UK fully aligned with European standards.
A possible agreement seems increasingly distant due to other factors as well. Especially time: any agreement must be examined by the legal staff of the two parties and formally approved by the European Parliament in plenary session. According to some experts, it should also pass through all national parliaments, as has happened in the past with other large trade agreements, such as the CETA agreed with Canada. Yesterday, the Prime Minister of Wallonia, one of the entities into which Belgium is divided, has already threatened ask your parliament to reject the agreement if it “crosses the red line set by my government.”
It is not clear whether Sunday’s deadline will really be the last: in recent days, several other diplomats have said that before leaving the negotiations, you have to wait until the last available minute, that is, until December 31. Even leaders who are more inclined to compromise, however, seem less and less willing to compromise at any cost. “If they ask the UK for conditions that we cannot accept, we will go our own way,” German Chancellor Angela Merkel said yesterday.
Meanwhile, the European Commission is expected to publish already today, probably before the start of the European Council at 1:00 pm, he writes. Politician – updated plans to manage any No deal.
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