This is brilliant. David is joking at the end, but..
Since the MoU on GATTXXIV, from negotiating mandate to being in force,
FTAs under 2 years.:
Palestine 274 days.
The Faroe Islands 1 year, 8 months, 10 days
2nd generation FTAs?
None
CUs:
Andorra 1 year, 9 months, 13 days
Since the MoU on GATTXXIV, from negotiating mandate to being in force,
FTAs under 2 years.:
Palestine 274 days.
The Faroe Islands 1 year, 8 months, 10 days
2nd generation FTAs?
None
CUs:
Andorra 1 year, 9 months, 13 days
What I really like about what @DavidHenigUK does here is that lots of people are talking about "doing a deal" and we're actually "undoing a deal". When journalists ask has the EU done a deal in that time, the answer is yes: Palestine, but it's not the point.
When politicians say "Can you name one that was done with complete alignment?", the answer is still yes: Greenland. It took 2 years, and Greenland left before the EEC thought "This alignment is taking too long, let's stick a mutual recognition clause in to speed things up".
Greenland's negotiation may have been very different to ours. It didn't have a service economy and have to worry about the fact the EU has MFN clauses on services, and now we do because we just rolled them over (probably without a second thought about this issue).
Greenland is now an OCT country and I'm pretty sure it now has some very weird tariff arrangement with the EU, but again it's a different economy.
So to answer the questions going around the media at the moment, yes they have done a deal in that time, no, it's not the same, yes they have done one from full alignment, it still took 2 years and there were less complications.
