Brexit deadline: is Boris Johnson bluffing about walking away without a deal?
- UK prime minister has set a deadline of the October 15 EU summit for a post-Brexit deal on future trading terms
- With significant gaps remaining, the UK has said it would halt negotiations and proceed without a deal
UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson looks set to miss his unilaterally imposed deadline for a draft agreement on a post-Brexit trade deal to present to European Union leaders when they gather in Brussels for a crucial summit on Thursday.
Following phone discussions with French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Angela Merkel over the weekend, EU officials say early November would be fine to have an agreement in place, to be ratified by all 27 EU parliaments before the December 31 exit date.
The UK politically left the EU last January, but trading relations including the free movement of goods and people have remained in transition until the end of the year. In what his opponents and Brussels have regarded as a bluff, Johnson said last month the UK would walk away without a deal if no agreement was struck by October 15.
On Sunday, a Downing Street spokesman said the UK was committed to achieving a deal in the coming days, but prepared to end the transition period “on Australia-style terms if a deal was not possible”.
That could be interpreted as simply trading under World Trade Organization rules, minus the benefits of a specific agreement.
Faced with the worst recession in 300 years due to the Covid-19 pandemic and soaring infection rates that have led to regional lockdowns, the prospect of no agreement with its nearest and largest trading partner was enough to make even the UK government’s most hardline Brexiteers balk.
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“Because both sides would far prefer a deal to not getting a deal, I tend to think they will find a way of getting something on paper and signing it and calling it a trade deal, whatever it is,” said Anand Menon, an academic and director of the think tank UK in a Changing Europe.
On Sunday, France’s European affairs minister Clement Beaune said: “We want an agreement and we are working on it”.
“The ball is now in the UK’s court … we don’t want an agreement at any price.”
The two main sticking points that negotiators for both sides will have to tackle appear to be EU fisherman’s access to British waters and UK government demands to be able to set its own rules over state subsidies to business.
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With fishermen in France, Belgium, the Netherlands and Denmark all dependent on UK waters for their fish catch, the issue of fishing rights is highly political on both sides of the English Channel. English fishermen were some of the staunchest supporters of Brexit, even though fisheries account for only 0.1 per cent of the UK economy and 1 per cent of the EU as a whole.
Belgium has threatened to invoke a 1666 agreement with England to allow 50 fishing boats from the city of Bruges to fish unheeded in UK waters if a fishing quota arrangement was not secured.
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On the issue of state aid, the UK wants to be able to spend how it wants, particularly in the technology sector, but has yet to lay down its demands to the EU.
“This is a government that wants the freedom to spend money when and where it likes without having to check with anyone first,” Menon said.
“On the other hand, it would be a curiosity if a Conservative government didn’t sign a trade deal because it wants to subsidise business on a significant scale.”
The issue of erecting a customs border with Northern Ireland – as Johnson agreed with the EU last year in a Withdrawal Agreement – has gone quiet for now after the EU began legal proceedings against the UK. The Johnson government wants fewer checks and has passed legislation that would allow it to break international law by reneging on the treaty if its demands were not met. The EU said if there was no trade deal it would take the UK to the European Court of Justice.
“The PM is already getting flak from the Tory right on Covid,” the anti-Brexit former Conservative MP, David Gauke tweeted recently. “To get a deal with the EU he’s going to have to make concessions that the Tory right won’t like either.”
Reports last week that British trucks carrying goods would need a permit to enter the UK coastal region of Kent if no customs agreement was reached caused an outcry in one of the country’s most diehard Brexit-supporting counties.
The most likely scenario appeared to be a set of “mini-deals” between the UK and the EU in important areas such as aviation rights, haulage and energy agreements to continue to tide the two sides over into the New Year when negotiations would continue.
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“It feels like over the past couple of weeks there has been more momentum and it feels like more positive noises are coming out,” Maddy Thimont Jack, a Brexit researcher at the Institute for Government, told an ITV podcast. “But even if a deal is reached I don’t think it is going to cover everything.”
She said the two sides were now “looking at more of a bare bones deal at this stage and looking at more negotiations continuing into next year”.
Additional reporting by Bloomberg
