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Michel Barnier has mocked Boris Johnson for issuing a “third unilateral deadline” during a meeting with EU ministers, warning that Brexit talks remain difficult and that there is still little prospect of the two sides entering a decisive “tunnel” negotiation.
With 48 hours to go until the EU leaders’ summit in Brussels, at which point the British prime minister has demanded a decisive moment, the EU chief negotiator suggested that a deal was “very difficult but still possible”.
He noted that Johnson had twice previously suggested that the UK needed certainty of a deal by a specific date, only to backtrack later. “This is the third unilateral deadline Johnson has imposed without a deal,” Barnier was said to have commented. “We still have time.”
Johnson had said he wanted a deal before the end of the summer and then mid-October, before saying in recent weeks that all that was needed was a sign of a deal.
The UK urgently wants to open a short ‘tunnel’ negotiation during which the two lead negotiators would be given freedom by Downing Street and the EU member capitals to be creative in solving outstanding issues on the basis of that any result would later be supported.
But after hearing Barnier’s assessment, diplomatic sources said this final phase didn’t seem to be on the cards “far from it.”
“The negotiations are in a difficult phase,” Barnier told EU ministers in Luxembourg, according to high-level diplomatic sources. There was a “more constructive tone,” Barnier said, but “there was still a need to make progress on three key issues.”
Discussions on the level playing field provisions, including the control of state subsidies, were continuing, but the UK was trying to keep the issue of EU access to UK fishing waters’ on the table until the last minute to ensure that can get the highest price for that, ”he said.
Barnier told ministers that it was important to put the issue of access to British waters in perspective. The UK was asking to remain part of the EU’s single energy market, whose economic value was “five times” that of fish, it said.
There was also a lack of commitment from the UK on how the terms of the trade and security deal would be controlled, Barnier told ministers, according to sources.
He later tweeted: “The EU will continue to work towards a fair deal in the coming days and weeks.”
German European Affairs Minister Michael Roth told reporters before the meeting that the EU was ready for a no-deal outcome.
“We are well prepared for both scenarios, everyone should know that,” he said. “No deal is the worst case, not just for the European Union but for the UK as well, but we are prepared for that.”
When details of Barnier’s grim assessment emerged, a UK government source responded.
“The EU has been using the old playbook where they thought ticking the clock would work against the UK,” the source said.
“They have assumed that the UK would be more willing to commit the longer the process took, but in fact all these tactics that they have managed is to get us into mid-October with a lot of work that could have been done without doing.
“This is even more frustrating because it is clear that we have come a long way since the beginning of the year. We have approached the negotiations in a constructive and reasonable manner, but now the time is extremely short. We urgently need the EU to pick up the pace and inject some creativity. “
