Talks delayed by week in bid to break stalemate on Brexit
With just 18 months left to make the break, we assess talks progress
BREXIT talks have been put back a week as UK and EU negotiators struggle to break the deadlock.
Talks had been due to restart on Monday, but a Government spokesman said it had been “jointly agreed” to delay that until September 25.
He said it would “give negotiators the flexibility to make progress in the September round”.
On a day of setbacks for Theresa May after her Commons Brexit Bill victory, Belgian MEP Philippe Lamberts accused her of being “out of her depth”. And her Chancellor Philip Hammond said there could be “significant disruption” at Channel ports if Britain crashed out of the EU without a deal. Rebel Tories also backed 157 amendments to the EU (Withdrawal) Bill just hours after it cleared its first Commons hurdle.
The clock is ticking. Britain and the EU have just over 18 months to agree a Brexit deal. So far we have had three rounds of talks, countless position papers and a series of crunch votes in the Commons.
But has any actual progress been made, or is there still a danger we will crash out of the EU on March 31, 2019, without a deal? We rate the issues from one to five on how far along we really are:
Divorce Bill
The Government has accepted it will have to pay a financial settlement to leave the EU. This is a step forward from Boris Johnson saying the EU could “go whistle”.
Brexit Secretary David Davis says the UK will meet “our international obligations” but – understandably, while the talks continue – has yet to say the maximum Britain would be willing to pay.
The difficulty for the Government is the final bill is estimated at around £50billion, far more than the £10billion which polls suggest voters are willing to accept.
The latest negotiations were particularly tense as British and Brussels officials haggled over the legality of the EU’s demands. Ultimately a settlement should be on the cards, but it may be a tough sell to voters.
Transition phase
The good news is the British Government now accepts the need for a transition period.
The bad news is there is no consensus on the terms of it, or how long it would last.
The transition period would let Brexit negotiations continue after the March 2019 cut-off date set down by Article 50.
All 27 EU countries would have to unanimously agree to the talks being extended, so it is not certain the UK’s request for extra time will be accepted.
Labour and some Tories have called for the UK to stay in the single market and customs union during the transition.
But a hardline group of Tory Brexiteers are demanding the UK should be out of the single market, stop paying money to Brussels and be free to strike its own trade deals the moment the deadline arrives.
Theresa May has yet to state her terms. She faces having to square competing demands within her own party while negotiating a transition acceptable to the EU.
European Court of Justice
In her speech to the Conservative party conference last year the Prime Minister could not have been clearer.
“We are not leaving only to return to the jurisdiction of the European Court of Justice.
“That’s not going to happen,” she said. The Government has since refined its position. The new line is the European Court of Justice (ECJ) will not have “direct” control over British laws. This is a pragmatic approach that could unlock several of the impediments to a Brexit deal. The ECJ does not just oversee trade deals but also organisations such as the European Aviation Safety Agency, European Medicines Agency and various cross-border crime and policing bodies. If we want to remain a part of these, we need a UK-EU dispute mechanism, possibly involving the ECJ at arm’s length.
There is growing optimism this could be possible.
Northern Ireland
Northern Ireland poses a special problem as it is the only part of the UK with a land border with the EU.
Both Britain and the EU agree there needs to be a unique solution that avoids the return of a hard border between Northern Ireland and the Republic. But finding a solution is proving problematic. A position paper by the Department for Brexit said the UK wanted to avoid “any physical border infrastructure” and there should be no checkpoints.
The EU’s chief negotiator accused Britain of trying to use Northern Ireland as a “test case” for its future arrangement with the EU. “This will not happen,” he said.
Citizens’ rights and immigration
In June Mrs May made a “fair and serious offer” to EU citizens living in the UK.
This would give EU nationals who have been in the country for five years the same rights as British citizens to health, work and public services.
The Government’s plans on immigration have yet to be finalised. But a leaked Home Office document suggested free movement would end immediately after Brexit and EU nationals seeking to move to Britain would have to apply for resident permits and provide “basic proof of employment, study, self-employment or self-sufficiency”.
The EU gave a mixed response to Mrs May’s plans for EU citizens already settled here, but said they did not go far enough.
New trade deal and customs arrangement
The EU has insisted talks on a future trading relationship cannot begin before resolving the issues of Northern Ireland, the divorce bill and citizens’ rights.
Britain has had to accept the EU’s timetable but is arguing that many of these issues are inextricably linked.
For example, how can we decide the Northern Ireland border question before we know what sort of customs arrangement we will have? (See below).
The Government has also accepted it will have to give some money to Brussels for the right to trade freely but has yet to say how much it is willing to pay.
Its plans for a frictionless customs deal are still up in the air.
Without this, more than 180,000 UK firms that trade in the EU would face red tape at borders, costing them £4billion a year.
One Government paper recommended a complex system to track whether goods came from within or outside the EU.
Mr Davis then dismissed his department’s own idea as “blue sky thinking.”
Everything else
Even if these fundamental issues are resolved there are still dozens of other areas to be negotiated – from cross-border crime, data protection, regulations for the financial sector, university collaboration, fisheries and Gibraltar – to name just a few.