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UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson will go to Brussels “in the next few days” for a face-to-face meeting with the President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, hoping to find an understanding on what has been described as the “last true”. attempt ”to avoid a no-deal Brexit. This is the increasingly likely “no deal” scenario, which will skyrocket if no alternative is found before December 31st. Speaking to reporters Tuesday, Johnson said the negotiation “seems very, very difficult at the moment” and that “there are limits beyond which, of course, no reasonable government or country can go.”
Johnson and von der Leyen decided to meet in person on Monday night, after a long phone call that in theory should have restarted negotiations but did not actually bring any significant news on the issues that divide the two sides. The conversation followed 48 hours of very intense negotiations, which, however, had not unblocked the situation.
A few hours before the phone call, the British government made an opening gesture, or at least what was presented as such, promising to annul some rules passed in October by Parliament in violation of the Withdrawal Agreement, which had greatly infuriated the Union. and that, among other things, it constituted a violation of international law. The opening didn’t help much, also because the British Parliament is against it, and Irish Chancellor Simon Coveney he said Monday night on the net RTÉ that in the last two days “there has been no progress” in the negotiations.
It is also unclear how long the phone call between the two leaders lasted: the EU says 90 minutes, the UK 45. The media, however, write that at one point Boris Johnson asked for a break and the conversation never resumed. The two leaders, at that time, published a joint statement in which they claim to have “agreed that the conditions to close an agreement are not yet met due to significant differences in three critical issues: level playing field, the governance and fishing ”, and add:“ We ask our negotiating chiefs and their teams to prepare an account of the differences that still remain, to discuss them in a physical meeting in Brussels in the coming days ”.
Of the three questions still open, the first, namely level playing field, is probably the most important: the EU wants to prevent the UK from profiting anticompetitively from its companies after Brexit, for example by providing state subsidies: this, say European diplomats, would not be fair because, in the event of a deal , the United Kingdom would have access to the single European market, and the subsidized companies – to continue with the example – could compete with those of the member countries, which according to the Union rules cannot receive subsidies. That is why the EU calls for the right to impose sanctions on the UK for anti-competitive behavior, among other things.
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Problems in the governance Instead, they refer to disagreements over the mechanisms, legal and otherwise, that will be triggered in the event of disputes between the EU and the UK. Finally, fishing has become a difficult issue to solve, especially as the countries bordering the Channel, such as France and Belgium, want to maintain access to British territorial waters for their fishermen, as has been the case for decades. The UK believes that this is a violation of sovereignty and is negotiating to find a compromise, for example on the length of a transition period or on the definition of which ships could have access to British seas.
The Brexit negotiation over the years has had many decisive moments that have not turned out to be such, but the proximity of the deadline of December 31 suggests that the meeting of the next days, if not final, will be at least very important. The fact that the two leaders have decided to address it personally, after months of meetings between the two main negotiators, Michel Barnier on the European side and David Frost on the British side, also suggests this. The face-to-face meeting between Johnson and von der Leyen is the first since last January, when the President of the Commission had gone to London.
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It is not yet clear when von der Leyen and Johnson will meet. In theory within this week, but the opportunities are relatively few, because the European Council summit will be held in Brussels on Thursday and Friday, where the heads of state and government of the member countries will meet in person. Second Politico Europevon Der Leyen would not want the two events to overlap, to prevent Johnson from taking advantage of the summit to extend the negotiation to other leaders. Top European rulers, including German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Emmanuel Macron, have tasked von der Leyen to lead the negotiations and have so far avoided divisions that could weaken the European negotiating position.
If the negotiation fails, the UK will be out of the European Union on January 1, 2021 without any economic and trade agreement, and this could cause serious damage to the economy (the Office for Budget Responsibility has estimated that UK GDP would fall by 2 percent more than expected and that around 300,000 jobs would be lost) and considerable inconvenience for the population on both sides, because border controls, the need for visas, residence limits, etc. would return. The European economy would probably also be affected by a No deal.
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