Going the ‘extra mile’: UK, EU to continue Brexit trade talks

BRUSSELS — Teetering on the brink of a no-deal Brexit departure, Britain and the European Union stepped back from the void Sunday and agreed to continue trade talks, although both downplayed the chances of success.

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson and EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen ditched a self-imposed deadline and promised to “go the extra mile” to clinch a post-Brexit trade agreement that would avert New Year’s chaos and costs for cross-border commerce.

“Where there’s life, there’s hope,” said Johnson, offering little else as rationale to keep on with talks that have struggled to make headway for most of the year and need to be finished before Jan. 1, when the transition period for Britain, which left the EU last January, ends.

With hundreds of thousands of jobs and tens of billions in trade at stake, von der Leyen said after her phone call with Johnson that “we both think it is responsible at this point in time to go the extra mile.”

All this, she added, “despite the exhaustion after almost a year of negotiations and despite the fact that deadlines have been missed over and over.”

U.K. and EU negotiators were still talking at EU headquarters on Sunday, with less than three weeks to go until the U.K. leaves the economic embrace of the 27-nation bloc.

But their leaders failed to present visible progress on any of the outstanding issues of fair-competition rules, mechanisms for resolving future disputes and fishing rights.

Johnson said the “most likely” outcome was that the two sides wouldn’t reach a deal and would trade on World Trade Organization terms, with the tariffs and barriers that would bring.

European Council President Charles Michel warned there could not be a deal “at any price, no. What we want is a good deal, a deal that respects these principles of economic fair play.”

It remains unclear how much of the gap between the two sides is negotiating tactics and how much reflects fundamental differences.

“Negotiations need to have a purpose,” said Fabian Zuleeg of the EPC think tank. “We just spent another 4-5 days not moving forward, so adding more days doesn’t really help.”