20 May 2020

Institute for Government: The UK must get better at selling its deal to the EU

On 15 May the third round of UK–EU future relationship talks ended. There are still significant disagreements between both sides. The EU’s chief negotiator, Michel Barnier, has warned that a deal would require “progress across all policy areas”. David Frost, his UK counterpart, stated that the EU’s “ideological approach… makes it more difficult to reach a mutually beneficial agreement”.

It is quite normal for parties to stick rigidly to their positions in the first year of talks (trade negotiations of this magnitude tend to take several). But with the UK government’s deadline of 31 December for a deal to be struck, neither side has the luxury of time. Both sides need a breakthrough, soon. For its part, the UK would be better off articulating how its proposals benefit member states, rather than focusing on what the EU is, or is not, offering the UK.

Publishing draft legal proposals – finally – is a positive step

Until yesterday the UK had refused to publish its draft legal texts – it had also refused to let the EU commission share them with member states. This stymied the talks in two ways. First, it made it hard for member states to understand the UK’s position ahead of the negotiations. This then made it harder still for EU negotiators to move quickly: negotiators receive their mandate from member states’ governments, so any move away from it must be approved by them. The more time the EU commission spends on explaining the UK’s position to its members, the less time it has to find areas for potential compromise.

The UK’s decision to publish these texts now is too little too late for the talks just gone, but will help speed up this process ahead of the next round of talks in June.

The EU has its own balancing act to perform domestically

The EU is approaching these negotiations like any other: it will only compromise when it has a clearer sense of the trade-offs that are possible across the board. This is because it must not only manage the expectations of its member states, but also those of the European parliament and individual sectors across the bloc. The commission will need to tread carefully when selling any compromises it is ready to make with the UK to EU governments.

If it plans to move on fishing quotas and access to UK waters, for example, it will want to demonstrate some wins elsewhere too, such as on governance (the processes through which the deal is to be monitored and enforced).

The UK will need to demonstrate why its deal is in the EU’s interests too

The EU has made clear that it does not see the UK as a standard ‘third country’, due to the its geographic proximity and economic interdependence with the bloc.

The UK’s response has been to focus on precedent, repeating the claim that the EU is asking for far more of the UK than it has of its other trading partners in comparable deals, such as those between the EU and Canada and Japan. But in some areas, like law enforcement and judicial co-operation, the UK’s demands go beyond what the EU has offered other third countries.

This tactic is not working. Instead of leading to a breakthrough, both sides appear to be doubling down on their claims. If the UK is serious about getting the EU to change its red lines, it will need to prioritise tone as much as substance. In other words, it will need to get better at selling its own proposals and demonstrate how they can benefit EU members.

One example, which Frost highlights in an open letter to Barnier, published on the UK government’s website on 19 May, is the EU’s refusal to grant the UK mutual recognition of conformity assessments. Instead of focusing on the fact that the EU has offered this to Australia and New Zealand, as the letter does, the UK would be better served by demonstrating why granting this to the UK would be of direct benefit to the EU and its businesses, namely the removal of red tape.

Time is short and negotiators are at loggerheads. To get anywhere close to a compromise, the UK will need to get much better at showing the EU what the deal does for them. This is more likely to sway decision makers in EU capitals (and their lobbyists) than arguments over precedent

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