EU diplomats from the other 27 countries met yesterday in Brussels to be briefed by Stéphanie Riso, a senior member of the EU’s Brexit negotiating team, on the current state of the talks and on the bloc’s reaction to U.K. position papers released last week on post-Brexit customs arrangements and the Northern Irish border, according to Politico (HERE). BrexitCentral said our ideas for a new customs regime was a key topic of conversation in Brussels this week, quoting the Politico report. Anyone clicking on the link would note the title - "Brussels scoffs at Britain's customs proposals".
One of our position papers may have been a topic of conversation but it was only to be laughed at as a "fairy tale" rather than the sign that Brussels is listening as BrexitCentral hoped.
Next week the third round of negotiations begin and it promises to be an exciting week for us with Britain refusing to engage (HERE) on the settling of the accounts and with slow progress on the other two initial issues. There can only be three possible outcomes. Either Brussels will accede to our demands to begin trade talks immediately or they will suspend the negotiations until we produce our own ideas about the divorce bill. A third option would be to carry on with the Irish border and citizens rights issues and ignore everything else, pushing the decision on whether sufficient progress has been made until October.
Think about the first option. If the EU allow discussions to begin on trade this will be hailed in the British press as a victory for us and a climb down for them. It will set the tone for all the future negotiations. Brussels will have blinked first. I think this is somewhere between highly unlikely and impossible.
The last option would not give the UK side a very strong message about the money issue. It would mean waiting until October to deliver a message that could and should easily be given now, that no discussion is possible on trade until the first three issues show good progress. Delaying this until October would set the talks back a couple of months.
So, it must be either a very strong statement about the need for the UK to produce some proposals on the money or a suspension of the talks until we do. As I said, it promises to be an exciting week.
