EU dashes Davis’s plan for pre-brexit trade talks

The EU has quashed David Davis’s hopes of agreeing a detailed outline of the future UK-EU trade agreement before the Brexit deadline expires.

“There will be no negotiation strands, no ‘hundreds’ of British negotiators,” one EU diplomat said, referring to the Brexit Secretary’s plan for expansive pre-brexit talks. “Trade negotiations will not start properly until after 29 March 2019. We must get the fundamentals right,” they said.

EU-27 diplomats were yesterday told Brexit negotiations were deadlocked over how to avoid a hard border in Ireland. The EU still believes this will be impossible without the UK joining some form of EU customs union.