Brexit negotiators turn up heat with 48 hours until UK deadline, but prospects for EU deal look grim, says French minister
- Boris Johnson has said he will walk away from the negotiations if there is no clear progress by Thursday, when EU leaders hold a summit in Brussels
- France’s foreign affairs minister, Jean-Yves Le Drian, told lawmakers that a no-deal Brexit looks likely at this point
Britain and the European Union are locked in talks over a deal on their future relationship with each daring the other to blink just two days before Boris Johnson’s deadline for abandoning the negotiations expires.
Neither side believes the other has offered enough for talks to reach a conclusion, with the British government deriding the EU for its hard-line stance on fisheries and the EU calling for Britain to cede ground in other key areas such as business subsidies.
The deadlock is set to continue on Wednesday when Johnson and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen discuss the impasse on a video call. The prime minister has said he will walk away from the negotiations if there is no clear progress by Thursday, when EU leaders hold a summit in Brussels.
“We want an agreement,” German Chancellor Angela Merkel told a virtual EU conference on Tuesday. “But we also have to take into account the reality: an agreement has to be in the interests of both parties, in British interests as well as the interests of the 27-member European Union.”
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Failure to secure an accord would see Britain leave the single market and customs union at year-end without a trade deal in place, triggering disruption and additional costs for millions of businesses and consumers already reeling from the coronavirus pandemic.