An article in Der Spiegel Online (HERE) has some interesting points to make on the progress of the talks in Brussels. It asks, as well it might, what strategy we are pursuing in the negotiations. They are as puzzled as we are. Here are a few extracts:
The British are behaving as if they had all the time in the world. And yet the opposite is true. Brexit is set to become reality in March 2019. Until then, EU projects on issues running the gamut from cod fishing quotas to nuclear waste, projects that have taken decades to develop, will have to be dismantled and reassembled to reflect that the British will no longer be part of them. Thousands of laws and guidelines must be revised or rewritten. Every paragraph has the potential to cost banks, companies and service providers vast sums of money. Every bullet point could upend the lives of the more than 3 million EU citizens living in Britain and the 1.2 million Brits residing elsewhere in the EU, changing the everyday lives of students, migrant workers and retirees.
If there is a clever strategy behind all this, then no one has comprehended it yet. It is more likely that David Davis and Michel Barnier have made no progress because they are puppets in a play in which, particularly on the British side, too many smug and fanatical people are pulling the strings.
If Davis is troubled by the mess the British have created for themselves, he doesn't show it. It also doesn't seem to trouble him that four senior officials have already left his ministry. He appears to be free of self-doubt, and even fellow party members say he is the only person they know who can strut while sitting down.
.....the policy papers all seem to rely on the same contradictory spirit. In almost magical fashion, they assume that everything will simultaneously change and remain the way it is today. A border between Northern Ireland and Ireland? Well, yes, but it would be an invisible one. Abolish the customs union? Of course, but replace it with a model that "mirrors" this customs union. The impression in Brussels is that the British want out of the EU, and yet somehow they want to stay in.
Given the circumstances, the European Commission is also beginning to address the question it has preferred to ignore until now, and not just because of the headlines: What happens if it goes wrong? The entire process threatens to come apart over the money issue, in particular, according to an internal document for the German parliament. It reads: "This issue still threatens to bring down the negotiations."
Instructions have already been issued internally to prepare for a scenario of failure. The member states were asked to designate contacts to make preparations for a Brexit without an agreement.
"Brexit," says a senior EU diplomat, "does not follow an economic, but rather a political logic."
That is, if logic is even the right word anymore.
