Budge on other issues before we talk fishing rights, says EU
MICHEL BARNIER, the EU’S chief negotiator, is refusing to open discussions on Britain’s new fisheries proposals until the UK budges on other issues, it has emerged.
Mr Barnier, who is meeting David Frost, the UK’S lead Brexit negotiator, in London today, is insisting on “parallelism”, where multiple aspects on a range of issues must be agreed before moving forward.
Britain is keen to move on and the pair are meeting outside of the scheduled negotiating timetable to try to straighten out the stagnated talks with the official, eighth round resuming in London on Monday.
The UK had wanted to secure a deal by the end of July and Mr Barnier says an agreement has to be in place by the end of October for it to be ratified around Europe by the end of the year.
Fisheries remains just one of the main sticking points, and if there is no deal by October European fishermen will be completely excluded from British waters under international law, causing a devastating impact on their communities.
Brussels is also fearful that statefunded British companies will have an unfair advantage over European firms in the EU market and wants to get the UK to commit to a so-called “level playing field”.
Whether or not the EU’S top courts will regulate the trade deal is also a red line for either side.
It came as France’s foreign affairs minister criticised the UK’S Brexit negotiating team for having an “uncompromising and unrealistic attitude”.
Jean-yves le Drian is one of the first major voices from an EU government to speak out after Mr Barnier started phoning around member states to demand they step in and support him.
During the same address to French ambassadors, Clement Beaune, the country’s state secretary for Europe, said: “We’re not moving on our position, we can’t be weak.”
A source told The Times: “The EU has always said that fishing is a key issue for resolution but has subsequently declined to discuss it.
“We had hoped to make progress and presented room papers but, unfortunately, the EU refused to engage due to their self-imposed requirements.”
Last week Angela Merkel, the German chancellor, said she expected her team to be busy with Brexit “until the end of the year”.
Her country holds the rolling sixmonth presidency of the EU Council and decided to remove Brexit from a meeting of deputy ambassadors taking place in Brussels this week.
It was deemed that there had not been enough progress in the negotiations to make it worthwhile.
A decision now sits with Charles Michel, the EU Council president, about whether to put Brexit on a special summit called for this month which was meant to concentrate on Greece and Cyprus’s concerns about Turkey’s gas exploration missions in their waters. But with Mr Barnier demanding leaders step in, and the clock running out in the talks, the two-day summit may be hijacked by Brexit.