LONDON: British Prime Minister Boris Johnson said on Thursday last-gasp talks for a Brexit trade deal with the European Union could fail, and urged the public to prepare for a “no deal”.
“There’s now a strong possibility... that we will have a solution that’s much more like an Australian relationship with the EU than a Canadian,” he said, referring to Britain trading in future with the EU on pared-down World Trade Organisation terms.
The prime minister’s warning came after talks with European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen in Brussels the previous day yielded no breakthrough.
The two leaders gave their sides four more days, until Sunday, to end four years of diplomatic heartburn and salvage the unlikeliest of trade deals after the UK voted to leave the EU in 2016. Otherwise, they face a tumultuous no-deal split at the end of the month, threatening hundreds of thousands of jobs and billions in losses.
Even after two lengthy phone calls and a three-hour dinner in less than a week, there was still far too much which was unpalatable.
“We understand each other’s positions. They remain far apart,” von der Leyen said.
Johnson flew to Brussels in hopes of injecting new momentum into talks that are stuck on issues like fishing rights and competition rules.
But there was no breakthrough at the three-hour meeting, which Downing Street described as frank. Von der Leyen said it was lively and interesting.
But a whiff of progress anywhere? None.
Britain left the EU on Jan 31 but remains in its economic structures until the end of the year. That means a serious economic rupture on Jan 1 that could be chaotic if there is no trade agreement.
The two leaders had hoped to inject political momentum into trade talks that have become hopelessly deadlocked on fishing and other key aspects of the future relationship. But Britain and the EU gave ominously opposing views of the main sticking points and each insisted the other must move to reach agreement.
Johnson told lawmakers in the House of Commons the bloc’s demands that the UK continue to adhere to its standards or face retaliation were not “terms that any prime minister of this country should accept”.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel stressed that the EU would not compromise on its core principles. Merkel told the German parliament that the bloc would “take a path without an agreement if there are conditions from the British side that we can’t accept”.
Impact visible
When Johnson was crossing over the English Channel to Brussels, down below the impact of Brexit was already visible with extra long tailbacks in France’s Calais where truckers were trying to meet the demands of British companies which want to lay in extra stock ahead of potential disruption on Jan 1.
“For about the last three weeks we’ve seen an increase in the flow of traffic toward Great Britain due to stockpiling. The platforms, whether it’s the port and the (Euro)tunnel, don’t have capacity to absorb this increase in traffic,” said Sebastien Rivera, Secretary General of France’s National Federation of Road Transport.
“Right now, it takes (truckers) easily three or four more hours to cross the English Channel. So it is easily 240 or 300 euros of financial costs to the company, that’s for nothing more than the additional time it takes,” Rivera added.
Failure to secure a trade deal would cause much greater disruption, bringing tariffs and other barriers that would hurt both sides, although most economists think the British economy would take a greater hit because the UK does almost half of its trade with the bloc.
Published in Dawn, December 11th, 2020