Michel Barnier sought to reassure Paris and other jittery EU capitals on Wednesday that he would protect the bloc’s interests in the creative compromises being explored to get a Brexit deal sealed this week.
Warning that the next 36 hours would be critical, the bloc’s chief negotiator on Wednesday briefed diplomats and EU lawmakers that key sticking points remained in the areas of “level playing field” conditions for business, EU fishing rights in UK waters and how any trade deal might be implemented, according to participants.
But he also used the closed-door meetings to set out compromises that are being examined, including a transitional period for fishing rights and a broader review clause for the trade deal, saying Brussels and London needed to assess by the end of this week whether an agreement was possible.
The briefings were hastily arranged after France and other capitals this week started raising serious doubts behind the scenes about the direction of talks. In a sign of how the endgame of negotiations is stoking internal divisions, diplomats on Tuesday voiced concerns that European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen, who is receiving daily updates on the talks, might be tempted to compromise too much to secure a deal.
The French concerns are shared by other fishing nations, a group that also includes Belgium and the Netherlands — countries with the closest economic ties to Britain. Mr Barnier’s briefing to ambassadors on Wednesday morning “was mostly an exercise to calm nerves in Paris and elsewhere”, said one EU diplomat.
Mr Barnier gave an indication in the meetings of how both sides were exploring possible compromises, even if breakthroughs had not been achieved, participants said.
On the issue of the so-called “level playing field” guarantees that the EU says are a precondition for a “zero tariff, zero quota” trade deal, Mr Barnier told MEPs that the deal would contain a framework that was “unprecedented” in any other EU trade agreement, one person said.
But while he said there had been “progress” on the issue of state aid, there were still gaps on the question of “domestic enforcement” of any agreement, and over whether the UK would have a domestic subsidies regulator with “ex ante” powers to pass judgment on any state aid before it is given out. The UK government’s resistance to such a regulator that would reduce its freedom to distribute subsidies has been a major sticking point in the talks.
Two people familiar with the talks said that member states had been concerned that Mr Barnier was preparing to cut a deal without the UK agreeing to an “ex ante” regulator. They added this had raised questions about what other compensatory protections would be included in the deal’s governance and dispute-resolution mechanisms in order to offset the risk to EU businesses of being undercut by unfair competition.
Mr Barnier told MEPs that “disagreement persisted” on what unilateral remedies each side could take in the event of a dispute over state aid, and on the baseline for maintaining social, environmental and other standards in individual sectors.
After the briefings, David McAllister, head of the EU parliament’s Brexit co-ordination group, said on Twitter: “We are very much aware that the work on level-playing field and state aid has entered the final phase.”
According to participants, Mr Barnier also said the two sides were exploring a transitional arrangement for fishing rights, with the idea that any renegotiation at the end of that period would be linked to the two sides’ overall economic agreement.
He said this would allow the EU and UK to have annual negotiations on how much fish the two sides could collectively catch but within a stable system that would protect the EU sector.
However, EU member states with fishing interests remain sceptical about any deal that would make access to UK fishing waters conditional on agreements on quotas. If arbitration failed over a disputed quota then both sides could resort to tariffs and denial of access.
An EU diplomat familiar with the discussion on fishing said member states were worried that such a deal could leave the EU side exposed. “In reality, this could mean that the UK could kick us out whenever they feel like it”, with little or no consequences for Britain, the person said.
EU diplomats said that Mr Barnier was given a clear message at Wednesday’s meetings that he should not stray from the negotiating mandate that national governments gave him earlier this year.
https://news.google.com/__i/rss/rd/articles/CBMiP2h0dHBzOi8vd3d3LmZ0LmNvbS9jb250ZW50L2Q2NWUwOWRhLWJhYzUtNGQyNy1iZGM4LTIyOTQ5Y2U5MWJlONIBP2h0dHBzOi8vYW1wLmZ0LmNvbS9jb250ZW50L2Q2NWUwOWRhLWJhYzUtNGQyNy1iZGM4LTIyOTQ5Y2U5MWJlOA?oc=5
2020-12-02 09:47:00Z
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