EU negotiator dismisses Johnson's post-Brexit trade deal claims
It will not be possible to negotiate a comprehensive trade deal in the 11-month transition period that would follow an exit from the bloc on 31 January, the EU’s chief negotiator Michel Barnier has told a private meeting of senior MEPs in Strasbourg.
The UK is due to leave the single market and customs union at the end of December 2020 under the terms of the withdrawal agreement. At that point, new arrangements – or none – will come into force. Any extension to the UK’s membership of the single market and customs union would need to be agreed before 1 July.
Barnier said that, if such an extension was not sought by the UK, negotiators would “need to focus on specific subjects” and that agreement on various issues, including the rights of British air carriers to operate as they do today, would have to wait until after 2020.
Barnier said the key areas on which the negotiators would work in the coming year would be trade in goods, data, fisheries, aviation, police and judicial cooperation.
The goal for the EU is to agree on “zero quotas, zero tariffs and zero dumping”, he said in a reference to the bloc’s determination to ensure that the UK signs up to a high degree of regulatory alignment to ensure British companies do not have a competitive advantage post-Brexit.
Barnier also told MEPs that the “toughest question” would be the EU’s insistence that free movement in goods comes as a package with the free movement of people. He added that the most “difficult outcome” for the EU would be a hung parliament as it would imperil ratification of the deal in Westminster.
The prime minister has claimed the UK can conclude a trade deal in time, though experts had already pointed out that such deal typically take years to negotiate and ratify.
We know it's impossible to do it in 11 months but you ain't heard nothing yet - Labour will do it in three, any advance on three, there at the back...