Friday 6 March 2020

First round of talks break up: what do we know?

This first series of parallel negotiations in Brussels ended yesterday with a press conference given by Michel Barnier. Our chief negotiator David Frost was nowhere to be seen so we have no idea what the UK government's take on this first skirmish was. Barnier's view, as usual, was perfectly logical, uncompromising and transparent. I think we can all see which way this is going. The scope of the talks was set out by the EU in this agenda published a few days ago.

The areas covered were:
  • Trade in goods
  • Trade in services (and investment and other issues)
  • Transport (Aviation and other)
  • Civil nuclear cooperation
  • Fisheries
  • Level playing field matters (LPF)
  • Law enforcement and judicial cooperation
  • Participation in Union programmes
  • Governance
'Michel Barnier' was trending on Twitter yesterday afternoon, mainly from Brexiteers who had read The Sun or The Telegraph's coverage and sounding like apoplectic Millwall supporters just before a match against Bayern Munich at the Allianz Arena. There was an awful lot of totally irrational bravado and jeering through an alcoholic haze, the usual British prelude to abject failure. When will we learn?

Here's a typical tweet:
You can listen to the entire statement using the 10 minute video at the foot of this post. Barnier spoke in French but a translation is provided.

He cites serious differences between the two sides on four issues and exposes our irrational and stupidly ideological position

Firstly on LPF. As he points out the UK wants to maintain high standards and avoid 'trade distortions' but won't actually commit to doing it in a legally binding text and asks why not? Why not indeed.  Of course, anyone who has ever had any dealings with Brexit Johnson will know the reason - as Barnier does.  It's because our notoriously untrustworthy PM will later renege on it. I cannot see the EU bending on this one. 

Secondly, on judicial matters.  Barnier rather shocked the press by blurting out that we did not want to "commit formally to continuing to apply the ECHR". This looked at first like an alarm bell moment but when put to No 10 later a spokesman said  the UK would not be ditching its commitment to the ECHR, but insisted it was completely separate to the Brexit negotiations.

He said: "The UK is committed to the European Convention on Human Rights and to protecting human rights and championing them at home and abroad. But we believe that this does not require an additional binding international legal commitment. How the UK gives effect to its long-standing, strong human rights protections is a matter for the UK as an autonomous country."

So, same problem as earlier. We verbally agree but don't want to see it in the small print. This is all a question of trust.

Third, the governance issue. We want a Swiss style spaghetti of separate deals, something the EU will never agree to, while they want a unified overarching treaty, an association agreement which can be built on over time. The present 100+ multiple separate bilateral agreements they have with Switzerland is unwieldy and will not be repeated you can be quite sure of it.

Finally, the highly emotive issue of fishing. Barnier not only rejected our plan for an annual quota negotiation outside the association agreement, he called it 'absolutely impractical' because of the number of species involved.  I wouldn't put any money on the British plan being accepted, to put it mildly.

However, although the NI protocol wasn't mentioned by name, it was clearly the elephant in the room. Barnier said progress was possible and the keys to success were (a) not going back on previous commitments and (b) mutual respect.

I think we know where he is coming from.

An agreement was reached on setting up the Joint Committee to oversee the implementation of the NI protocol. Michael Gove is to head up our side and he will meet Maroš Šefčovič, an EU commissioner and Slovakian diplomat, who will represent Brussels, on March 30th. The EU will want to see rapid progress on border posts and infrastructure. This is the coming flash point as I posted yesterday.

Agata Gostyńska-Jakubowska, a senior research fellow at the Centre for European Reform has a nice explanatory Twitter thread on how the EU intend to structure their side of the talks. It's a model of clarity and openness. 
She says:

"This full transparency policy will make it easier for him to keep the EU 27 united in the next months to come. Last time round the transparency policy has kept the UK on the defensive, and left the impression that the UK was working to an agenda set by the EU."

And also:

"As I have argued before the EU will make the negotiations conditional on the proper implementation of the WA. In other words: the policy of mutual trust and no going back on commitments."

Ms Gostyńska-Jakubowska says the EU is unlikely to give ground on state-aid and backtracking on the overarching treaty objective would make the EU look silly vis-a-vis what it has said repeatedly on Switzerland. I think they are unlikely to make any concessions at all. I think as the year goes on the economic and diplomatic strength of the EU27 relative to the UK will become increasingly clear and the less they will be inclined to let us off the hook - where we remain as long as we are outside the EU.

If you want to hear it all from the horse's mouth, here it is.




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