15 January 2020

Financial Times: EU ramps up its Brexit demands

[...]the EU will try to impose obligations on the UK going far beyond anything in its trade deals with other countries, leading to inevitable British accusations of hypocrisy. 

At a seminar on Tuesday, France and other governments said Britain should be forced to stay in sync with EU environmental regulations, mimicking upgrades to European law that happen over the years to come. 

This demand for “dynamic alignment” goes beyond the terms of a political declaration that the EU and UK agreed last year would form the basis of their negotiations. In the declaration, Britain only pledged not to fall back from the standards in place at the end of its post-Brexit transition period.  The EU’s determination to force Britain to accept a “level-playing field” of regulations and state-aid rules is driven by its anxiety that the UK will become an economic rival.

Michel Barnier, the EU’s chief Brexit negotiator, has repeatedly stated that Boris Johnson’s ambition of a tariff-free, quota-free deal hinges on accepting this. [...]

The EU insists that tougher obligations are justified by the size of the EU-UK economic relationship, by geographical proximity, and because Brussels has never done a zero-tariff deal with another major economic power. 

But UK officials retort that Mr Johnson is not seeking anything that resembles membership of the EU single market, and that existing EU trade deals, such as its agreement with Canada, should serve as a precedent.

  During the past two years of Brexit talks, EU leaders often accused the UK of seeking to “cherry pick” a future relationship with Europe. They insisted that any agreement would need to contain “a balance of rights and obligations”. Now Britain argues that it is the EU that is being inconsistent. [...]

[...]after Brexit, Britain’s share of the fishing rights for the more than 70 fish stocks that straddle EU-UK waters would not grow, and the EU27’s would not shrink, compared with under the EU Common Fisheries Policy. 

But the EU stance runs totally counter to Britain’s determination to take back control of its waters and renegotiate quotas on shared stocks. It also means that the EU is tying the entire fate of the trade talks to an issue that is only meaningful for eight coastal states. 

For the time being, everyone is on the same line — the seminar on fish only lasted for 45 minutes, and there was no dissent. But the test for unity will come when the negotiations are well under way. One senior EU diplomat warns of a “cumbersome” negotiation on this point. 

The final main takeaway from the seminars is that, for the EU, everything in the future relationship is linked.  Take the case of financial services. Here, market access will mainly be determined by unilateral EU decisions on whether British regulations are robust. 

But, in practice, the speed of these decisions will be tied to Britain’s willingness to accede to the EU’s core demands, not least (you guessed it) on fish.  When it comes to the future relationship, nothing is agreed until the EU gets what it needs. 

Full article on Financial Times (subscription required)

© Financial Times