Comments on the 6 points raised in @alexebarker’s piece (thread).
1. Whether Norway et al would welcome U.K. participation in EFTA/EEA isn’t a question I claim expertise on: FWIW I can see both political opportunities and political problems.
2. *Any* UK/EU final relationship will require ratification by all the EU27 (including the infamous Walloon parliament), and cannot be written into the Art 50 Withdrawal Agreement. So that’s not an objection in itself.
The real question is whether it is likely to be quicker to negotiate a deal for which the basic framework is there than either eg a completely new “Super Canada +++” or a Chequers type arrangement with close regulatory alignment.
That question has to be assessed against the background of the priorities - now accepted by the Government and almost all the Opposition - of ...
... keeping the Irish border invisible, avoiding the NI/GB split & poor governance mechanism set out in the backstop, minimising customs/VAT/regulatory friction for goods trade so as eg to retain Nissan here, and trying to keep as much access for U.K. service providers as we can.
Those priorities are going to be very difficult and complex to negotiate as an add-on to “Super-Canada”: and we know what the EU thinks of Chequers.
The case for the EEA is that it already achieves (with adjustments for customs, assuming we need a CU at least for a while in order to resolve the Irish border issue) those objectives. So that should speed things up.
As to Nick’s point that we are already in the EEA, there is a case that the U.K. remains in the EEA Agreement in some form even after 29/3/19: indeed the U.K. Govt at one stage accepted that it would (albeit in an “unworkable” way).
My reservation about putting weight on that politically is that it’s clear that the EU does not agree that the UK would remain in the EEA in any form: and a legal argument - however respectable - that isn’t accepted by those you are negotiating with isn’t much help in practice.
3. The EU has offered a Norway type model - see eg the famous Barnier steps. And if U.K. single market membership is on offer at all (and it would be a switch for the EU to say it isn’t) then it needs a governance mechanism.
Any form of automaticity or automatic direct effect model for the incorporation of new EU law in which the U.K. will have had no vote seems to me to be wholly unworkable as a long run arrangement: it’s too undemocratic.
So if SM membership is possible outside the EU at all - and the EU has said that it is - it must be on the basis of a Norway type governance/incorporation mechanism (at least unless the outsiders have a formal vote on the law at issue - which is regarded as heresy).
4. It is indeed part of the EEA/EFTA case that it could be negotiated more quickly, thereby avoiding the backstop.
But the concern that the U.K. might then, having avoided the backstop, then walk out of the EEA/EFTA (using the one year notice provisions in the relevant treaties) is a bit hard to follow.
Any final relationship treaty is bound to have a termination/notice provision. So the objection applies to any final relationship treaty, and so can’t be a particular objection to the EEA/EFTA.
But leaving the EEA/EFTA is likely to be more disruptive for the U.K. than leaving a looser FTA.
So I’d have thought a pragmatic view would be that it’s less likely that the U.K. would walk out of the EEA/EFTA without a further deal with the EU than that it would walk out of a looser arrangement without such a deal.
5. Fish are going to be an issue in any long term relationship: the EU wants access to U.K. waters; the U.K. wants tariff free fish exports to the EU. Again, this isn’t a particular issue for EEA/EFTA.
I just don’t understand the reference to wanting to hold the U.K. to stricter level playing field conditions in the backstop than are already in EFTA/EEA: environment/State aid/labour market protection are all in the EEA.
6. The point here is that financial services regulation is likely to be a particular flash point. That may well be true (although it’s also going to raise similar problems in any “equivalence” arrangement).
