Brexit talks head for reckoning on state aid after two sides trade blows
Both EU and UK say their positions are misunderstood, suggesting there may be more room for manoeuvre than meets the eye
The time for a political intervention in the EU and UK’s future relationship talks is fast approaching.
After publicly knocking lumps out of each other on Friday, the two sides will spend this week separately trying to work out where to go from here. In effect, the EU and UK have handed each other ultimatums saying they need to shift position or the talks will rapidly reach stalemate.
The next negotiation round is scheduled for the week of June 1 and is the last planned before Boris Johnson holds stocktaking talks with EU institutional leaders.
“The round that we have just had is disappointing, very disappointing,” EU chief negotiator Michel Barnier said on Friday, after a week of video talks between his team and UK officials. “I hope the next round in June and the one after in July will be more positive.”
Mr Barnier and his British counterpart David Frost each accused the other of hypocrisy. For Mr Barnier, Britain is in some ways still trying to secure the kind of extensive single market access favoured by former prime minister Theresa May while dodging the obligations that come with it. For Frost, the EU has failed to realise that Britain has moved on, and Brussels is making wildly excessive demands in exchange for the trade-deal-based relationship that the UK wants.
Mr Barnier actually went further, telling reporters that the UK was harking back to the 1970s — an age when trade deals were largely focused on tariffs. Britain, he said, needed to embrace the present-day reality that modern agreements need extensive safeguards for environmental and social protection.
But what the two negotiations teams have managed to do over three rounds of talks is define the toughest nut that ultimately their political masters are going to need to crack. This is the EU’s demand that any trade deal come with a robust, enforceable, level-playing field of regulations to ensure that businesses are not unfairly undercut.
Both sides argue that their positions on this are misunderstood, a sign perhaps that there is more room for manoeuvre than meets the eye.
The EU’s negotiating mandate says Britain should continue applying the bloc’s state-aid restrictions and should have to keep pace with its levels of environmental and labour protections. EU officials insist their priority is simply to ensure “common high standards”.
Brussels has accused Britain of refusing to provide any meaningful policy guarantees, but the UK argues that it could accept a level-playing field that respected the country’s sovereignty.
“What we can’t accept is that EU laws or EU standards can be binding on the UK,” said a senior UK negotiating official.
Britain will publish its negotiating proposals this week — ending weeks of complaints from EU capitals over not being allowed to see them. The UK will also soon reveal its plans for implementing last year’s deal to prevent a hard border in Ireland. Those measures will be scrutinised closely by Brussels.
The EU has made clear that other parts of the future-relationship talks will not be allowed to advance unless its core concerns including the level playing field are addressed. We are approaching a reckoning.