Macron’s playing a perilous game trying to sink trade talks
INEVER expected to see the day when Michel Barnier came across as the reasonable one. But as we reach the final denouement of Brexit it appears there are even more immovable forces at play in the EU than the bloc’s chief negotiator.
Throughout the Brexit process Barnier’s stubbornness and inflexibility has held back a UK- EU trade deal which could have taken half an hour to agree had mutual self- interest been allowed to lead the way.
Instead, Barnier seemed determined to use the negotiations to punish Britain for the temerity of voting to leave his cherished EU.
It isn’t Barnier, however, who seems to be holding up progress at the last hurdle. A group of EU countries led by French President Emmanuel Macron has apparently complained that he is ceding too much ground to Britain, especially over fishing rights. They want him to hold up talks, even at the cost of the UK leaving the transitional arrangements at the end of this month without a deal.
Barnier, for his part, has threatened to walk out of his job if no agreement is reached. Good riddance, many will be tempted to say.
BUT even less do I want to see President Macron allowed to throw a spanner in the works, and a still more inflexible figure put in Barnier’s place.
What on Earth does Macron think he is doing, frustrating a trade deal with demands that French fishermen be allowed to continue to fish in UK waters? The EU wouldn’t for a moment, say, have demanded that French trawlers be allowed access to waters off Newfoundland as a price of a trade deal with Canada. It isn’t an issue of trade; it is one of sovereignty over coastal waters.
We should never have ended up where we are now. Britain and the EU have been trading freely since even before we joined what was then the European Economic Community in 1973. Before that we were members of the European Free Trade Association ( EFTA).
All we needed to do on leaving the EU was to roll over our trade arrangements, based on zero tariffs. We’ve managed to do that with Canada, Japan and other countries with which we had free trade deals through our EU membership.
True, there could be difficulties in future if UK and EU product standards were to diverge, or if either side were unfairly to ban certain products or unreasonably subsidise their own industries. But those are matters which could be dealt with as and when they occur – there is no need to behave as if we were starting from scratch, as if the UK and EU had never traded a thing in the past. A trade deal should have been an integral part of the withdrawal deal. Remember Theresa May’s fine words: “nothing is agreed until everything is agreed”? Instead, she, followed by Boris Johnson, fell into the EU’s trap by agreeing to a withdrawal agreement before trade were even allowed commence.
That was a victory for Barnier – of sorts. I say “of sorts” because EU exporters will suffer if no trade deal is in place by the end of the month. UK exporters will suffer, too, of course, but thanks to the yawning trade gap between Britain and the EU there is more at stake on the EU side.
In October the German, French and Italian equivalents of the CBI jointly warned that tens of thousands of EU jobs could be threatened if the EU failed to agree a trade deal with the UK.
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HE British Remainers who complain that fishing only accounts for a tiny part of the UK economy should refocus their ire on President Macron. Fishing only accounts for a small part of the French economy, too.
Macron should be grateful that Britain is prepared to grant French boats any access to fish UK waters, not trying to demand that lopsided fishing arrangements agreed when Britain joined the EEC should be continued long after we have left.
Truth is that the EEC would never have come up with the idea of making fish a common resource had it not been for the fact that the three countries which joined on 1 January 1973 – the UK, Ireland and Denmark – had extensive fishing waters.
It was a typical piece of EU/ EEC opportunism and was a serious warning for the future: how the organisation was determined to destroy sovereignty to create a superstate.
But UK fish stocks are no longer a common EU resource. That is something that President Macron and other EU leaders will have to accept. Either they get on and conclude a trade deal – or they will face the wrath of their own exporters.
‘ EU exporters will suffer. There is more at stake on their side’