Here's my latest on the Brexit negotiations...
There's a lot of talk about time pressure +who that benefits. The EU has more onerous ratification obligations than the UK, eg the European Parliament will have to ratify the week beginning Dec 14 (the UK gov has more discretion)
There's a lot of talk about time pressure +who that benefits. The EU has more onerous ratification obligations than the UK, eg the European Parliament will have to ratify the week beginning Dec 14 (the UK gov has more discretion)
2/ As has been widely discussed, the EP typically needs 4 wks to run it through its committees (no fewer than 11 cttees scrutinised the WA); there's the legal scrubbing, and translation into 23 languages by lawyer-linguists.
3/ However the EU is shifting strategy, going for "patience" and finding legal solutions to remove any time pressure caused by all the procedures. This cd include Provisional Application of parts of a deal from Jan 1, but that's regarded as "messy" and would only gain a few weeks
4/ The bigger determination seems to be to let the UK be the ones to pull the plug. This wd be on the basis that the EU is better placed to weather the storm of No Deal than the UK.
5/ Yes, parts of the EU would be badly hit - not least Ireland, but also Denmark, Belgium, the Netherlands, parts of France etc. The calculation is that these constituencies will be supported financially, and in the time the UK will have to come back to the table next year.
6/ Ones source says: “The timing on both sides is an issue but we are not going to be the ones to pull the plug + say we're not moving forward anymore. The pressure is more on the UK. At the end of the day we still have the single market, we still have the Withdrawal Agreement.”
7/ This attitude is most accurately reflected in the comments by EU trade commission @VDombrovskis yesterday. “We actually have seen many deadlines to come and go. But there is one deadline which will not be able to move, which is Jan 1 next year when the transition period ends.”
8/ All this is against the backdrop of no real movement on the big issues: level playing field, fisheries and governance.
9/ The EU seems to be determined not to move on LPF, which is a fundamental issue. From the sovereignty argument, it is, of course, a fundamental issue for the UK as well.
10/ If a breakthrough is achieved on LPF/Governance, then fisheries will likely be a classic numbers, hard bargaining, last minute negotiation, which may even involve @vonderleyen @BorisJohnson
11/ But the EU appears to be calculating that the UK won't move in its direction on LPF, and so is prepared to wait it out, even if that means time really does run out and we're in a No Deal situation.
12/ EU leaders will meet by videoconference this afternoon on Covid. Brexit is not on the agenda. Some leaders may raise the issue of No Deal contingency planning, but the Commission believes an awful lot of work was done last yr ahead of 2 No deal deadlines
13/ Once source says that if any contingency measures are published in the coming days they will be "limited"
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