Tony Connelly of the Irish broadcaster RTE has been the most consistent and accurate journalist following the trade talks and puts most of the British press to shame. After yesterday's briefing of EU ambassadors by Michel Barnier, he summarised where things are in a long Twitter thread. It shows how the EU and the wily Barnier have manoeuvred Frost and Johnson into the position where they must now make the hard decisions under real pressure.
Most of the treaty (almost 2000 pages according to Connelly) is finalised. Only the dangerous things for Johnson are left. The red lines that have not already been crossed, must now be crossed.
I copied the thread to make it easier to read:
After Michel Barnier's briefing of EU ambassadors this afternoon, here's where things stand:
There is a basic deadline of Christmas Eve to get a deal. That will give the EU's legal services time to draw up a letter to send to the UK seeking provisional application of the treaty from Jan 1
It's understood officials will need four days at a minimum to draft a letter seeking provisional application of the treaty (all this is on the basis that it is pretty much too late for the European Parliament to ratify the treaty on time for Jan 1)
On the prospects for a deal: diplomats say they're not ruling out a deal by Christmas eve. Michel Barnier said there had been significant progress. Member states expect to convene a meeting of the Working Party (of Brexit coordinators) every day (except Christmas Day)
According to one diplomat Barnier will publish the text once/if it's agreed, but before it's been legally scrubbed. Member states can approve the text via written procedure (sending a formal letter) as there are no Council meetings foreseen to do it in person between now and Dec 31
There are still some issues around the level playing field and governance, areas the UK wants to change, or wants sunset clauses on. For example, London wants to limit the extent to which energy can be subject to the level playing field constraints
Despite the cautious optimism that a deal can be done, fisheries remains a major problem. Member states say the UK offer of the EU handing over 35pc of the value of its catches does not count pelagic species and that's a serious problem
The UK is proposing to hive off pelagics to the informal independent coastal state forum including Norway, Iceland, the Faroes etc. Problem for EU is boats would lose a stable outlook on access for pelagics + wd have to negotiate access annually
Barnier told ambassadors the UK was still looking for a three year transition while the EU would accept 6 years, although some MS felt even that was not long enough
The general feeling is that the UK offer does not give EU fishing communities stability and predictability - and it excludes the 6-12m zone. Also, according to sources, the UK offer makes burden sharing difficult, eg Ireland + Denmark would suffer disproportionately on pelagic stocks.
Overall, member states believe fisheries is so sensitive and even non-coastal member states have not noticeably broken ranks on the issue (in Belgium, for example, fishing is a Flemish pursuit + the central govt can't afford to alienate Flemish nationalists on the issue)
Barnier said the image of Brexit in Europe on Jan 1 would be angry protesting fishermen. How would you explain to people we're going to give the UK interconnection rights in the North Sea to the EU grid + at the same time our boats aren't allowed to catch fish in UK waters?
Other outstanding areas still not resolved: rules of origin for electric batteries; UK participation in Erasmus; and an EU demand for a non-discrimination clause...
This would mean that the UK cannot discriminate against any member state. It's been incorporated into social security cooperation, but not into the sphere of short term visas. This is a non-negotiable element for the EU, I'm told
In particular there is a concern that, say, Romanian citizens would be given worse treatment compared to other member states when it came to short term visas.
Council legal services told ambassadors that lawyer-linguists had been working "day and night" to try to get the draft text legally scrubbed and that even if the deal was done tonight MS would not get a watertight, legally scrubbed English text on time
Officials refer to a non-legally scrubbed text as a "dirty" text (says here). The treaty would need a special provision saying the 23 "authentic" legally-sound translated texts would all be available in March / April and would replace the "dirty" English text signed in the coming days
Member states are getting increasingly frustrated that they cannot see a draft text yet. There will be a meeting of the Working Party tomorrow where member states will get a detailed outline of what's in the treaty (but no text) in a meeting which could last four hours
And, wait for it, one official raised the possibility that the text is now 2,000 pages long, including annexes.
On fish, Lord Frost has been told the EU offer of just 25% of their quota (by value) being returned to the UK is a 'final' offer. I suspect also the EU will not conceded on the LPF on energy or much else. They are gambling that Johnson is not going to give up the 98% already agreed for a few fish and I don't think that is much of a gamble frankly.
Fishermen should brace for betrayal.
Neither do I think the ERG or the rest of the Tory party will waive through a 2000 page treaty without serious scrutiny in a single day. Johnson has squandered whatever goodwill he had at the outset on both sides of the Channel and in parliament.
I think it is now quite obvious that the PM never intended to walk away. He will have made a lot of concessions unacceptable to many in his party and the delays have all been tactical to squeeze the time down to the absolute minimum to avoid the awkward squad seeing where the concessions are until it's too late.
Assuming Christmas eve (tomorrow) is a deadline and the text is published on Saturday, parliament might be reconvened next Monday (28th) and the legislation needed to implement the FTA into UK law brought forward. It would give MPs just one or two days maximum to debate and scrutinise it.
If the 'dirty text' of the treaty is anything like the original WA it will be published without an index which means it takes an awful lot of understanding even to begin to see what its impact will be. I think MPs will demand a proper debate and either a provisional application or a technical extension.
Johnson will hail it as a triumph but one thing we can be certain of is that the deal will contain the seeds of his own destruction.
