European Commission President says her video conference with PM tomorrow is to take stock of negotiations and look ahead to the what next. She will then inform EU leaders of the outcome of the conversation with Boris Johnson. She mentioned need to intensify negotiations. /1
but rejected word 'tunnel' to describe how negotiations should proceed. President von der Leyen repeated well-known EU position "We want a deal. Better to have a deal as neighbours. Also in times of covid - with its devastating economic consequences but not at any price." /2
As to whether she felt optimistic that a deal would be done, President VdL said "Where there is a will there is a way. We have made progress in many fields" but added that most difficult aspects: fishing and level playing field esp state aid - are still "wide open" she said /3
She said if UK wants "full access to single market" it would need to "respect questions of fairness and competitiveness". She mentioned the importance to EU of having a dispute mechanism written in to the deal. She said it was worth working hard to achieve a deal /4
And on the parallel talks with UK on how to implement last year's Brexit Divorce Deal - she said everything was there to sort out the difficulties over the Irish Protocol and she called for it to be implemented in good faith /5
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