Juncker hopes for a November deal
EUROPEAN Commission president JeanClaude Juncker said yesterday he was fully focused on making Brexit negotiations a success and hoped for a deal in November.
“Negotiations are not easy because we also have to be critical that we receive different signals from London,” Mr Juncker said, addressing the Austrian parliament.
“There is a polyphonic chorus at the level of the British Cabinet and we try to arrange the pieces so that they become a melody,” he explained.
He said he hoped the European Council later this month would make “enough progress” that “we can see it through in November”.
Britain and the EU are trying to push the divorce deal as well as an agreement on postBrexit relations in time for two leaders’ summits scheduled for October 17-18 and November 1718.
On Thursday diplomatic sources said that the EU’s Brexit negotiators see a divorce deal with Britain as “very close”, a signal that a compromise might be in the making on the most contentious issue of the future Irish border.
A member of EU Brexit negotiator Michel Barnier’s team told a briefing with national diplomats in Brussels that a divorce deal with Britain was “very close”, according to two sources at the meeting.
The comment sent sterling to a 10-week high versus the euro.
Under the plan in the making, the EU would get assurances that the emergency Irish border fix would be indefinite, while Britain would get its way in having all of the United Kingdom, rather than just Northern Ireland, stay in a customs union with the bloc should the border “backstop” be triggered.
Ireland’s Prime Minister Leo Varadkar, speaking in Brussels on Thursday, stressed no new proposals have been made on paper and that they should come well ahead of the EU summit in less than two weeks to leave enough time for analysis.
Sources in Brussels say the devil is in the detail.
Such a compromise would leave the EU worrying that Britain could use Northern Ireland’s special access to the bloc’s single market to sell cheaper goods that would not adhere to labour, environment and other standards.
The bloc worries that London would use whatever special trade fix is agreed for Northern Ireland as a building block for the overall future trade relationship to win an unfair competitive edge.
While the EU is pushing London on the Irish conundrum, the 27 states remaining in the bloc are also fleshing out their proposal of future ties with Britain.
The chairman of EU leaders, Donald Tusk, on Thursday said a “Canada +++” was on offer, meaning an advanced free trade agreement coupled with close security ties and tight cooperation on global affairs, among others.