fficials on both sides of Brexit trade negotiations complain that there’s been little progress in recent weeks, despite a pledge to intensify talks.
Here are the issues that are plaguing negotiations and preventing a deal:
Governance
This issue is a question of how any deal that is signed would be enforced. Negotiators were mentioning it as an issue from the very beginning, with an EU insistence for a role for the European Court of Justice being an obvious problem for the British side.
While it briefly looked like both sides might be coming to some accommodation on this question, it’s reared its head again after Boris Johnson’s decision to try and overwrite last year’s withdrawal agreement. Now it is Brussels and its member states that are seeking a cast-iron mechanism for enforcing the agreement, in case the UK decides to try and break international law again.
The question of fishing is as politically charged as it is difficult. The UK is widely regarded to have been given a raw deal under the EU common fisheries policy, and Brexiteers want any new settlement to rectify this.
What’s so difficult here is that the technical terms like “relative stability” and “total allowance catch” are really a smokescreen for one question: who gets more fish and who gets less.
If British fishermen get more, that means other countries like France get fewer. That means fish that are currently providing a livelihood for coastal communities are no longer available. Emmanuel Macron in particular has said he cannot sell-out French fishermen.
One thing to watch here is that while no deal overall is most damaging for the British, on fishing it is the French and other countries’s fishermen who would be locked out of some waters.
The level playing field
The EU’s argument for a level playing field is: you want us to open our markets to your businesses. For that to happen, you need to guarantee that you’ll stick to high standards and relations we have, otherwise you’re just going to undercut our producers and damage our economy. And why would we do that to ourselves?
While distance on this issue is sometimes overstated – it’s a question of degrees dividing them, rather than principle – both sides have become genuinely stuck on the question of state aid rules, which the UK has traditionally been very in favour of.
Yet, the UK now wants to keep its options open and doesn’t want to be bound by such restrictions. There was some sign of movement on this issue ahead of October’s European Council summit, but things have gone quiet since then.
