Brexit negotiators turn up heat as UK deadline nears
LONDON: The UK and European Union are locked in talks over a deal on their future relationship with each daring the other to blink just one day before Boris Johnson’s deadline for abandoning the negotiations expires.
Neither side believes the other has offered enough for talks to reach a conclusion, with the British government deriding the EU for its hard-line stance on fisheries and the EU calling for the UK to cede ground in other key areas such as business subsidies.
The deadlock was set to continue overnight, when Mr Johnson and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen were due to discuss the impasse in a video call. The prime minister has said he will walk away from the negotiations if there is no clear progress by today, when EU leaders hold a summit in Brussels.
“We want an agreement,” German Chancellor Angela Merkel told a virtual EU conference. “But we also have to take into account the reality: an agreement has to be in the interests of both parties, in British interests as well as the interests of the 27-member European Union.”
Failure t o secure an accord would see Britain leave the single market and customs union at yearend without a trade deal in place, triggering disruption and additional costs for millions of businesses and consumers already reeling from the coronavirus.
At the summit in Brussels, the 27 EU leaders will say that “progress on the key issues of interest to the Union is still not sufficient for an agreement to be reached”.
Speaking to a meeting of EU European affairs ministers in Luxembourg, the bloc’s chief negotiator, Michel Barnier, said not enough progress has been made for the talks to enter the intensive final phase, according to officials close to the discussion.
A spokesman for Mr Johnson responded by saying the UK was ready to leave without a deal.
A British official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the EU had run the clock down deliberately and now needed to up the pace and inject some creativity to save the deal. The official also expressed frustration at the EU’s position, saying the UK had moved a long way since the beginning of the year.
One of the key obstacles to a deal remains what access EU boats will have to UK fishing waters.
France wants the same rights it enjoys today under the EU’s Common Fisheries Policy, something the UK government has rejected.