UK seeking ‘relationship of equals’ with EU neighbours
● Johnson adviser insists Britain will not accept any loss of sovereignty
Democratic consent would “snap, dramatically and finally,” if the UK remains bound by EU rules after Brexit, Boris Johnson’s chief Europe adviser has warned.
In a speech in Brussels last night, David Frost, who will lead trade talks with the EU, said the UK was seeking “a relationship of equals” and will not accept any loss of sovereignty or delay to the end of the transition phase.
“We only want what other independent countries have,”
Mr Frost said. His uncompromising message came after a seniorministerinfrenchpresident Emmanuel Macron’s government claimed the UK and EU will “rip each other apart” in the negotiations about to start.
The EU is insisting that the UK abide by Brussels rules and submit to arbitration by the European Court of Justice, as well as making significant concessions in areas such as fishing access, in order to secure favourable access to the single market.
In his first public remarks at the Free University of Brussels, Mr Frost said: “We bring to the negotiations not some clever tactical positioning but the fundamentals of what it means to be an independent country.
“It is central to our vision that we must have the ability to set laws that suit us – to claim the right that every other non-eu country in the world has.
“So to think that we might accept EU supervision on socalled level playing field issues simply fails to see the point of what we are doing.”
Mr Frost said the right for the UK to diverge from EU law was not about seeking to lower standards or protections but to preserve democratic consent.
“How would you feel if the UK demanded that, to protect ourselves, the EU dynamically harmonise with our national laws set in Westminster and the decisions of our own regulators and courts?” he said.
“The more thoughtful would say that such an approach would compromise the EU’S sovereign legal order; that there would be no democratic legitimacy in the EU for the decisions taken in the UK to which the EU would be bound… this structure would be simply unsustainable: at some point democratic consent would snap, dramatically and finally.”
French foreign minister Jean-yves le Drian told the Munich Security Conference on Sunday that “on trade issues and the mechanism for future relations, which we are going to start on, we are going to rip each other apart” when talks begin next month.
“That is part of negotiations, everyone will defend their own interests.”