UK to EU: we won't accept supervision in post-Brexit deal
18 February, 2020
Britain's chief negotiator on Monday lay out a clashing course in trade talks with europe, saying the 27-nation bloc has totally missed the idea of Brexit if it thinks it'll retain some supervision over U.K. actions.
The EU has said it wants the perfect trade relationship with the U.K. but only when you will find a level playing field for businesses on anything from state subsidies to environmental standards, and is insisting on clear checks to enforce it.
U.K. negotiator David Frost said, according to extracts from the released speech, that “to feel that we would accept EU supervision on so-called level playing field issues simply fails to start to see the point of what we are doing."
In a significant speech at the ULB Brussels university, he said that rejecting any EU meddling on regulations “is the point of the complete project" of leaving the bloc after 47 years.
And he further stressed that there is no chance that Britain would seek a longer transition period than 11 months to clinch a deal, a timespan considered next to impossible for a trade agreement between such commercial juggernauts.
On Jan. 1, 2021, he said, “we recover our political and monetary independence in full - why would you want to postpone it?"
With such comments, Frost gave indications that Britain may be willing to leave without an agreement rather than compromise on key issues.
The European Union also managed to get clear that rough times lay ahead when French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian said over the weekend that "we'll be seriously at each other's throats" through the negotiations.
The EU raised the ire of the U.K. by making a clear link between close commercial relations and the demand to stick to EU rules. Frost made it clear that setting its rules obviously trumps a cozy handle the EU.
“It is central to your vision that we will need to have the opportunity to set laws that suit us - to claim the proper that every other non-EU country in the world has," Frost said.
The EU has insisted that it has no issues with that, but that the further removed those laws and rules are, the less advantageous the trade deal. EU chief negotiator Michel Barnier was equally emphatic that the EU's 27 remaining nations wouldn't consent to any British trade deal just to avoid a costly, chaotic “no-deal” at the start of 2021.
The negotiations are to start out at the beginning of next month.
Source: japantoday.com