Britain ‘must submit to EU rules or face Brexit delays’
BREXIT could be delayed for years unless Britain makes further concessions to the EU, the European Parliament’s chief negotiator suggests today.
Writing in The Daily Telegraph, Guy Verhofstadt urges Theresa May to sign up to a catch-all association agreement with Brussels, which Brexiteers warn would leave the UK as a “rule taker” from the EU. He says it is time to abandon “ideology” and take a more “pragmatic” approach.
Piling the pressure on Mrs May to accept an agreement that Leave campaigners fear will amount to the UK ending up as a “vassal state” of the EU, he adds: “The time for wishful thinking and kicking the can down the road is fast coming to an end.” The Telegraph understands that Mr Verhofstadt’s suggestion has also been endorsed by the UK’S chief negotiator, Ollie Robbins, who introduced the idea at a Cabinet meeting this week, only to be rebuked by Michael Gove, the Leave-supporting Environment Secretary.
An association agreement – which is usually signed with countries that want to join the EU – would provide an umbrella treaty to link trade, security and other broader aspects of the relation- ship, says Mr Verhofstadt. But similar agreements signed with other countries suggest the UK would be forced to swallow large chunks of future EU laws. Brexiteers regard association
agreements as “second-tier EU membership”, and yesterday suggested Britain would be better walking away without a deal than accepting Mr Verhofstadt’s proposal.
Mr Verhofstadt warns against a Swissstyle arrangement with the EU, which involves scores of individual treaties, ranging from trade and customs to aviation and security.
“Opting for the ‘Swiss route’ would almost certainly lead to an extension of the transition agreement beyond 2020, whereas an association agreement could feasibly be signed provisionally at the end of the transition period, to be ratified later,” he writes.
His suggestion comes just days before a crunch meeting of the Brexit Cabinet committee at which ministers are expected to agree on a single strategy for Britain’s future customs arrangement with the EU.
Mrs May is under intense pressure from ministers to abandon her favoured option of a customs partnership with Europe, which would involve Britain collecting tariffs at the Irish border on behalf of the EU, and instead opt for a “maximum facilitation” model relying on technology and trusted trader status.
Sources close to Brexiteer Cabinet ministers said Britain will have to be subject to EU rules until at least 2023 if Mrs May opts for a customs partnership because of the length of time needed to get tariff collection systems in place.
Whitehall sources suggested last night that David Davis, the Brexit Secretary, could announce this weekend that the customs partnership option has been dropped.
Brexiteers warned last night that such an agreement would lead to “Brexit in name only”, trapping Britain in the EU’S regulatory embrace and removing the possibility of using the UK’S competitive advantage post-brexit.
Jacob Rees-mogg, leader of the 60-strong European Research Group of Eurosceptic Tory MPS, said: “This is not my vision of the relationship the UK will have with the EU. It sounds like secondtier EU membership and therefore is unattractive. We want to be a third country, like Canada, Australia or the US, not a country that is continuing regulatory association with the EU and is bound into specific control structures.”