With just weeks left on the clock until Britain is scheduled to leave the European Union for good, both sides in the ongoing negotiations pointed to a potential no-deal outcome on Monday.
European negotiators floated yet another deadline — this coming Wednesday — in an apparent attempt to introduce fresh urgency to talks, as Britain signalled it would be willing to climb down on key measures taken to protect the integrity of the United Kingdom after Brexit.
While talks remain apparently unproductive, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson and European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen released a joint statement after a telephone call between the leaders on Monday evening, revealing that the British premiere would indeed be travelling to Brussels in the coming days for further talks.
The fact the two leaders think there is enough to discuss to make an in-person meeting worthwhile — amid months of irreconcilable differences on the fundamental question of how much power to determine its own future Britain is willing to sacrifice in return for a trade deal — suggests a deal may still be on the cards, despite everything.
The joint statement said:
…we took stock today of the ongoing negotiations. We agreed that the conditions for finalising an agreement are not there due to the remaining significant differences on three critical issues: level playing field, governance and fisheries. We asked our Chief Negotiators and their teams to prepare an overview of the remaining differences to be discussed in a physical meeting in Brussels in the coming days.
While in the recent past, the Brussels jargon around Brexit has discussed “tunnels” and “landing zones”, today discussion has moved to the “endgame”, and Brussels’ top man on Brexit — French negotiator Michel Barnier — has said he does not expect talks to last any longer than Wednesday, and any deal that emerges could be ratified as soon as Thursday.
Britain’s The Guardian reports the remarks of heavily Brexit-involved Irish foreign minister Michael Coveney, who said of the state of progress that: “Having heard from Michel Barnier this morning, really the news is very downbeat. I would say he is very gloomy, and obviously very cautious about the ability to make progress today.”
Reports of a “senior government minister” reported by the Daily Telegraph bolstered that view. The paper cited the anonymous source as saying: “Talks are in the same position now as they were on Friday. We have made no tangible progress.
“It’s clear this must now continue politically. Whilst we do not consider this process to be closed, things are looking very tricky and there’s every chance we are not going to get there.”
Whether an in-person meeting between Johnson and von der Leyen does yield progress, the fact remains that what the two sides want in these discussions remain radically different. While the British people voted to leave the European Union — without conditions — back in 2016 and Boris Johnson’s government promised to honour that, the European Union is seeking an outcome to talks that would see the status quo maintained to the greatest degree possible.
The discussions over the post-Brexit trade arrangement between the two parties reflects this. Britain is negotiating for what it calls a ‘Canada-style’ deal, where Britain and the EU can trade freely as friendly partners but otherwise don’t interfere in each other’s business. To Brussels, the United Kingdom is too physically close to Europe to be allowed to trade and compete freely, and in return for tariff-free trade, the bloc demands that Britain allows the EU to continue to set some of its laws, enforced by the EU’s courts, and stick to some standards.
With the two ambitions so wildly divergent and any accommodation by either side to the other essentially amounting to a surrender, talks have continued for months fruitlessly. Indeed, the United Kingdom officially left the European Union at the end of January 2020, and over ten months later it remains in more or less the same position — ready to finally leave the ‘transition period’ which keeps the UK inside the union in all but name, but without any indication of what will happen after December 31st when that expires.
While the British government and the European Union are both keen to avoid a so-called no-deal, where Britain simply finishes its relationship with the European Union at the end of 2020 and goes on to have an ordinary third-party nation relationship with it as governed by international law — as Australia does, for instance –this may be a positive outcome for Brexiteers. No-deal would leave Britain really free to set its own laws, regulations, taxation levels, and levels of support for domestic businesses, giving it the best chance to become competitive and dynamic with its new-found freedom.
Critics, on the other hand, warn that leaving the European Union so abruptly — with just 1,650 days notice since Britain voted to leave in 2016 — would not give businesses chance to prepare for the change, and could lead to price rises for imports, or delays at the borders.
Brexit leader Nigel Farage has been among those warning that Boris Johnson may ultimately let the British people down, as while the European Union won’t offer Britain “anything”, the UK government might very well fold in negotiations and sign a bad deal out of fear of walking away with no deal at all.
Mr Farage said on Monday that the “signs are not good” for Britain achieving a proper, full Brexit and noted that British negotiators appeared to be open to discussing key areas of competence that shouldn’t even be up for discussion. He said: “I’m afraid after four and a half years — that’s how long now Conservative prime ministers have had to sort this out — four and a half years and it is wholly unsatisfactory.”
At the weekend, Mr Farage again reminded Mr Johnson that “no deal is better than a bad deal”. “I would rather have some short-term disruption knowing that we’re genuinely free, but I just don’t think the prime minister has got the bottle to do that,” he said.