EU ‘will work to exhaustion’ for a trade deal

European chief vows that negotiators will strive until a minute before deadline to get Brexit without tariffs

THE EU will “try everything” and “work to the point of exhaustion” to get a Brexit deal, the European Commission president promised Boris Johnson after the Prime Minister called on Brussels

to put “a tiger in the tank” of the trade negotiations.

In Monday’s summit talks, Ursula von der Leyen said her negotiators would work until the last minute before midnight on Dec 31, and do everything possible to avoid the UK leaving the transition period without a trade agreement with the bloc.

The Prime Minister had earlier invoked Jacques Delors, the commission president when Mr Johnson was The Telegraph’s Brussels correspondent in the early Nineties. Mr Delors once said his commission was the “tiger in the tank” of EU integration, borrowing an old Esso petrol advertising slogan.

Failure to meet the deadline – which was definitively set on Friday when formal notice was given that the UK would not ask for an extension to the transition period – would mean the UK and EU trading on World Trade Organisation terms, which include tariffs.

Mrs von der Leyen’s determination to avoid no deal is shared by her mentor Angela Merkel, the German chancellor. Germany takes over the EU presidency in July, giving Mrs Merkel even more influence in Brussels.

Mr Johnson, Mrs von der Leyen and the presidents of the European Council and Parliament, repeated their commitment to sealing a zero-tariff, zeroquota trade deal. Her team is optimistic a deal can be done if both sides are prepared to compromise over the vexed issues of the level playing field, European Court of Justice and fishing rights.

Mrs von der Leyen told Mr Johnson that without level playing field guarantees, EU member states would not pass a deal. Mr Johnson told her the UK had to be free to set its own laws.

Mrs von der Leyen was adamant that the European Court of Justice would have to be involved if there was any question of interpreting EU law as part of the final agreement.

She insisted that the EU would not drop its demand that the trade deal, fishing agreement and other aspects of the future relationship, be part of an overarching agreement underpinned by a single dispute settlement system. The UK wants any fishing agreement to be separate to the trade agreement.

Yesterday, Michael Gove, the Minister for the Cabinet Office, told the House of Commons: “We cannot agree to a deal that gives the Court of Justice a role in our future relationship.

“We cannot accept restrictions on our legislative and economic freedom unprecedented in any other free trade agreement.

“And we cannot agree to the EU’S demand that we stick to the status quo on their access to British fishing waters.”

The Daily Telegraph understands that if forced, the EU could negotiate a more bare-bones deal before the Dec 31 deadline, and supplement that basic agreement with more negotiations in the new year.