If Brussels does not want to do a deal at this stage, that is its right - just as much as it is ours to decide the deals we strike.
Source - Daily Telegraph 21/08/20
In their report back from the latest round of talks on a possible EU-UK Free Trade Agreement, both the EU’s chief negotiator Michel Barnier and his UK counterpart David Frost struck a pessimistic pose. Barnier said matters are going “backwards more than forwards” and that the current form of negotiations is “wasting valuable time”. Frost said it is clear that an agreement this year will clearly “not be easy to achieve”.
Now this could of course be a game of chicken, with both sides saying they are reconciled to accepting there will be no agreement in the anticipation the other will buckle. Last year the EU was adamant there was no possibility of their agreeing to re-open Theresa May’s Withdrawal Agreement and remove the notorious “backstop”, right up until the moment that they did. The EU is notorious for talking tough and then doing some deal at the absolute last minute working through the night into the early hours. It may seem like an unproductive way to do things, but appears to be how EU politicians signal to their electorates that they worked really really hard and got the absolutely best deal possible.
On the other hand, there is a pretty good chance they mean it. Ever since the EU Referendum, the EU has been consistently clear that it has no interest in doing any sort of mutually beneficial sovereign deals with the UK. Partly that was a reflection of the UK’s internal divisions – there was little value in the EU seeking to compromise if the UK side would be unable to deliver on anything agreed anyway. So, perhaps with Boris Johnson’s government having a clear majority, the EU will see more value in compromise. But there is also good reason to believe the EU sees doing any deal with the British that is seen as beneficial as a signal to other countries that might consider leaving (or countries such as Switzerland with whom it is currently re-arranging its partnership) that they too could secure such a deal.
I believe this is a mistake on the EU’s side. It should have regarded Brexit as an opportunity not a threat, and conversely it should have seen a failure to do a deal with post-Brexit Britain as a threat. The EU is heavily criticised internally as valuing political abstractions (“the European Project”; “the Four Freedoms”; “the integrity of the Single Market”) over the practical welfare of EU citizens. If it fails to do an FTA with the UK when there is so clearly a mutually beneficial deal to be done, how will it justify that to EU citizens that lose their jobs or to EU consumers that find the British goods they buy more expensive? Failure to do an EU-UK FTA deal could empower populist parties even more. But it does appear to be the EU view.
On the UK side there is room for certain forms of compromise, but none on the key points of principle. The UK must make its own laws, control its own borders, decide who fishes in its waters. The political forces in the UK that might have sought to compromise on those points spent all their power on the futile attempt to prevent the UK from leaving.
Our system is emotionally and politically reconciled to the possibility of no EU-UK FTA from the start of 2021. We will be undergoing huge structural change to our economy and society then anyway, as a result of the Covid-19 crisis and the massive recession it induced. Further temporary issues from the absence of an EU-UK FTA will be lost in the decimal points.
If there is no EU-UK agreement now – as seems increasingly likely – that does not mean no agreement ever. The two sides will return to these matters in a few years, once the UK is a fully-independent country again and has proved it is willing truly to have no FTA with the EU. Starting from that new baseline, it should be fairly straightforward to come to a mutually beneficial agreement – say in 2023 or thereabouts. It should also be noted that if the EU and UK do not do a deal by around 2023, it will become increasingly likely that Northern Ireland will vote to exit the Protocol under the Withdrawal Agreement in 2024.
There is talk of the negotiations dragging on until October in an attempt to finalise an agreement. That seems very late if no deal is ultimately achieved. Firms and the government should have been given more time than that to prepare. When no agreement was done in July, that should really have been the end.
It will obviously be good, in due course, to have a trade agreement with our close neighbours. But not at just any price, and there is no necessity it be now. If the EU does not want to do a deal at this stage, that is its right. The UK will in future decide whom we do deals with and the EU will do the same.
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