There will be no final trade deal before Brexit, says Verhofstadt
THE UK’S trade deal with the EU will not be finalised before Brexit day, Guy Verhofstadt has warned.
Instead there will be an “annex” inside the withdrawal agreement which will set out what a future relationship might look like, to be thrashed out during the transitional period while current rules remain in place.
The Prime Minister has previously ruled out such a situation, stating that the new trading arrangement must be agreed while negotiations to leave the EU take place, so the UK can be ready to sign international trade deals in 2019.
The European Parliament’s Brexit coordinator also warned that the right of EU citizens to move freely must remain throughout the interim period, despite Mrs May’s pledge that anyone coming to the UK after Brexit would be subject to a new arrangement.
And he said that if British MPS vetoed the final agreement between the two sides it could lead to a political collapse and another general election.
His claims come ahead of a key speech by David Davis tomorrow in which the Brexit Secretary is expected to set out Britain’s approach to regulation after March 29, 2019.
Key Cabinet ministers will then meet on Thursday at a Brexit “awayday” to thrash out what the next stage of talks should achieve.
Appearing on The Andrew Marr Show on BBC One, Mr Verhofstadt said: “I think what is possible by the 29th of March of next year, if everybody agrees with it – the British Parliament, European Parliament – will be the withdrawal agreement. Inside that withdrawal agreement, also an agreement on the transition.
“The transition, for example, of two years, at the end of 2020 or the beginning of 2021. And the third thing that will be possible is an annex, a political declaration describing, more or less in detail I should say… what the future relationship will be. And then we will use the transition period to clarify this political declaration in an international agreement.”
His comments fly in the face of Mrs May’s own plan for the UK’S exit. The Prime Minister’s spokesman said last year: “Everyone has always been clear that we are looking to wrap all this up in one single go. Everything will be agreed at the same time.”
Mr Verhofstadt also claimed there can be no competition between British financial services and European states and warned that Britain must pay the price of leaving if it wanted to forge ahead alone. He said such a decision was not punitive because it was the UK’S decision to leave.
He said a bespoke arrangement was impossible, adding: “You need to be part of the single market to have that. So that will be a far more difficult negotiation than simply to say, ‘Oh, we like financial service and we put it in, we don’t like this sector and we put it out’. But then that is [how] it will be for the future. That will be not now.”
Mr Verhofstadt appeared to pile pressure on the next round of talks, suggesting if MPS voted against the deal, a Jeremy Corbyn government could be elected. And he hinted that if Labour were in charge there would be “a new position of that new government on Brexit”, adding it would be “unknown territory”.