Thread by @hhesterm

How to think of the current impasse in UK-EU negations - boring trade nerd edition (thread)

The newspapers and some commentators will say things like "the UK is going further than anyone would in trade negotiations" or "the EU is making an unprecedented offer". What to think of that?

The current situation - without any of the rhetoric - is simple. The EU and the UK need to find some common ground on level playing field including state aid, fisheries, governance. They currently do not have that, because their positions are still apart.

You can now start to write things like "the UK/EU is going further than anyone ever did in trade negotiations" - but that is largely meaningless. Why?

Because all trade negotiations are individual negotiations between two partners. Those two partners decide what goes in there. No two bilateral free trade agreements are alike.

That means in US-Chile you can find interesting IP stuff that was unprecedented. In US-Korea the same. US-Mexico has car RoOs that are entirely novel.

(US Mexico of course means USMCA)

For the EU Ukraine has interesting stuff on CJEU jurisdiction that was unprecedented. EEA - I think goes without saying - unprecedented. Switzerland, omg how unprecedented is THAT.

We can now identify all the ways in which EU-UK might or might not be unprecedented. But to what good? The whole thing is unprecedented to the extend that there has never been an EU-UK FTA before.

And, curiously, talking about unprecedented: the UK has apparently agreed to data stuff in UK-Japan that was unprecedented. And the UK will agree a lot of things that have been unprecedented before. Because it's new. And it's on balance good for us.

At least in the judgment of those who make the call.

I know this is disillusioning. But the reality is simply that currently the parties are apart. Not that in an act of utter generosity your favorite party has offered what never has been offered before, an offer that the other side rejected spitting on all that's fair and good.