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A claim that Boris Johnson decided to violate international law after the EU threatened to disrupt Britain’s food exports to Northern Ireland has been condemned as “fake news”, amid growing outrage over the plans of the first minister to breach the withdrawal agreement.
Nathalie Loiseau, a former French Minister for EU Affairs, who is part of a committee of MEPs coordinating the European Parliament’s position on trade talks with the UK, said she feared Brexit supporters were looking for a reason to blow up the current conversations.
“Do you want us to lose our patience, close the door and leave?” she asked.
The MEP raised concerns after a report in the Sun newspaper claiming that Michel Barnier, the EU’s chief negotiator, had made a “veiled threat” to use the withdrawal agreement reached last year to block exports from Gran Britain to Northern Ireland if a broader trade deal was established. between the bloc and the UK was not reached.
Northern Ireland will effectively remain within the EU single market by the end of the year under a protocol in the withdrawal agreement included as part of attempts to avoid a hard border on the island of Ireland.
Unless the EU approves the UK government’s new so-called sanitary and phytosanitary (SPS) regime for agricultural products, trade flow with the rest of the UK could be affected.
It was claimed that Barnier had tried to harness the power of the European Commission to deny approval of the UK regime during trade and security talks, and that this had led the Prime Minister to seek ways to undermine the withdrawal agreement through of the law of the domestic market due to will be published on Wednesday.
EU sources denied that such a threat had been made, noting that the internal market bill, through which Northern Ireland Secretary Brandon Lewis has admitted that the government is seeking to violate international law in “ways limited “, would not solve the problem. to what was said to be the solution.
The most controversial clauses in the internal market bill concern the reduction of the EU’s ability to control state aid and apply tariffs on goods going from Great Britain to Northern Ireland and deemed to be at risk of entry. in the Republic of Ireland.
Instead, officials said that the UK government’s failure to provide details of its new SPS regime was the reason for the lack of approval from so-called “third countries”, describing the UK’s approach as a ” complete disaster”.
Speaking on BBC Radio 4’s Today show, Loiseau said the suggestion of threats from Barnier was yet another example of “Brexit-related misinformation and fake news.”
She said: “I’m sorry that since 2016 and even now, you have all this fake news going around creating confusion. As if some people among Brexit supporters were just looking for alibis to rush to a new deal.
“I would definitely need clarification, if the British negotiator wants a deal or if he doesn’t want a deal.
“I am not in Boris Johnson’s head, but what is happening now is fake news. You will remember a few days ago this rumor that the 27 [EU member states] they would withdraw their trust in Michel Barnier, who was completely made up.
“Then we have the British Prime Minister saying that a no-deal could be a good solution for the UK. Everyone knows that it is not real. It’s a man-made catastrophe. “
In the EU capitals and Brussels there is strong suspicion that the UK government is trying to present itself as willing to go for a no-deal outcome to achieve its main negotiating goals in the trade and security talks.
French Commerce Minister Franck Riester told the Financial Times that a free trade agreement was still possible. “There is a bluff game,” he said. “We will try to remain calm and collected, but firmly behind the EU27 line.”
