Covid-19 made Brexit invisible for a time – but now it’s back with a bang
TODAY David Frost, the UK’s chief negotiator, is expected to tell Michel Barnier, his EU counterpart, that the deadlocked Brexit trade talks must be made to work over the remainder of this month because the London government will not extend them. Both negotiation leaders have been knocked out from these talks because they each suffered a bout of coronavirus. It had long been expected, in both Brussels and Dublin, that the global virus crisis would give UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson a perfect alibi to abandon his petulant insistence about not seeking an extension to the free-trade interim arrangements beyond the deadline of December 31.
The UK formally left the EU on January 31 but nothing changes in the EU-UK trade relationship until at least December 31. The EU favours extending that no-change transition period by anything up to two more years. But the UK must seek any extension before June 30.
Now speculation is growing that the coronavirus risks having quite the opposite effect. In London, there is now talk of an extension being ruled out because Covid-19 would tie the UK into new EU regulations designed to co-ordinate the battle against the virus.
While we focused on coronavirus, Brexit never went away, you know. All that happened was that coronavirus made Brexit invisible for a time – but the virus also rendered Brexit far more lethal, especially from Ireland’s point of view.
Reports coming from Downing Street yesterday suggested the message to Brussels was there will be no extension to the post-Brexit transition period because of fears the UK will end up being bound by a raft of European Union anti-coronavirus legislation. Mr Johnson spoke with Ursula von der Leyen, the new EU Commission president, late last week about the international response to coronavirus.
The UK media was last night reporting Mr Johnson’s fears that EU coronavirus moves meant Britain must leave the EU’s single market and customs union on December 31. Without a replacement EU-UK trade deal there would be huge widespread disruption to imports and exports, with Ireland the most economically exposed EU member state.
“Clearly as the EU looks to deal with the impacts of coronavirus on the 27 member states, they will need to propose all kinds of new legislation which will obviously be designed for the 27, rather than being tailored in a way to suit the interests of the UK,” a British government spokesman told reporters.
“An extension to the transition period would bind us into future EU legislation, without us having any say in designing it,” the British spokesman added, alluding to a point very often made over five years of Brexit debate.
EU states are beginning to emerge from the pandemic lockdown. In Brussels, the EU Commission will start one of the biggest law-making programmes in the EU’s history, much of it aimed at supporting the single market which has been in existence since January 1993.
Britain would not be at the table for any of those decisions, creating a risk that the economy is damaged by EU laws drawn up principally to defend EU economies.
Fisheries is a big issue. The UK wants it treated separately, but the EU wants it strictly linked to future trade arrangements. Ireland is one of eight EU member states keenly interested in continued access to lucrative UK waters accounting for some €500m worth of fish per year.
London wants a post-Brexit fisheries deal modelled upon the EU-Norway fishery deal. Brussels has repeatedly rejected this idea and several countries with considerable political clout – led by France – are determined there can be no give. Things are compounded by EU accusations that Britain was trying to run down the clock on this issue.
Hopes of talks to “soften things” up in this sector are made even more difficult. Brussels diplomats familiar with the Brexit process say video-linked talks have maintained contacts – but were never hoped to offer real breakthroughs.
Ireland is among the member states which have suggested that the negotiations are pointless because there is not enough time to complete them. The coronavirus pandemic has also consumed all the governments’ attention for the foreseeable future.
Tánaiste Simon Coveney has said the EU needed to focus on persuading Britain to extend the transition in a way that would allow Downing Street to make an honourable retreat.
“Covid-19 has made what is already a very, very difficult timeline to get agreement virtually impossible,” the Foreign Affairs Minister said.
“If we’re going to have any chance of persuading them to take more time then we need to be careful about how we do that because demanding it from them... almost as a concession to the EU, is certainly not the way to do it.”
That view has been strongly held by senior officials in Brussels since shortly after the UK voters narrowly opted to leave the European Union in June 2016. But this week will bring back talk about another Brexit cliff edge.
There will be strong voices within UK business and politics arguing that the UK simply must opt for an extension to single market and customs union membership.
UK Labour, revitalised under its new leader Keir Starmer, will argue that the depths of the post-pandemic global recession would be the worst time to impose more barriers to trade with its main economic partners.
Coronavirus made Brexit invisible – but it also made it far more lethal to the Irish economy