Daily Archives: November 5, 2021

LONDON/BRUSSELS, Nov 5 (Reuters) - The European Union said on Friday that Britain had made no move to seek a compromise on post-Brexit trade with Northern Ireland and cautioned London against triggering emergency unilateral provisions in the Brexit deal.

Prime Minister Boris Johnson's Brexit negotiator David Frost ruled out immediately triggering such provisions, a move that would sour ties with the EU, concern the United States and anger Ireland.

But Frost made clear he wanted Brussels to offer more.

Maros Sefcovic, a deputy head of the bloc's executive European Commission, said the EU had "seen no move at all from the UK side."

"We hear a lot about Article 16 at the moment," Sefcovic said after talks with Frost. "Let there be no doubt that triggering Article 16 to seek the renegotiation of the Protocol would have serious consequences."

Britain has repeatedly warned that it may trigger emergency measures called Article 16 which allows either side to take unilateral action if they deem their agreement governing post-Brexit trade is having a strongly negative impact on their interests.

Sefcovic said triggering Article 16 would lead to instability in Northern Ireland and amount to a rejection of the EU's attempt to find a compromise. He said he would go to London to continue talks next week.

Frost "underlined that progress had been limited and that the EUs proposals did not currently deal effectively with the fundamental difficulties in the way the Protocol was operating," a British spokesperson said of the talks.

"In the UK view, these gaps could still be bridged through further intensive discussions," the spokesperson said.

Britain left the bloc last year, but it has since refused to implement some of the border checks between its province of Northern Ireland and EU member Ireland that the 27-nation union says London is obliged to under their divorce deal.

London says the checks are disproportionate and are heightening tensions in Northern Ireland, putting at risk a 1998 peace deal.

The 1998 peace deal largely brought an end to the "Troubles" - three decades of conflict between Irish Catholic nationalist militants and pro-British Protestant "loyalist" paramilitaries in which 3,600 people were killed.

By putting checks on some goods crossing between mainland Britain and Northern Ireland, many pro-British unionists say the protocol has breached the 1998 peace settlement. The EU says tighter controls are necessary to protect its single market of 450 million people.

"We are not going to trigger Article 16 today, but Article 16 is very much on the table," Frost told journalists.

A spokesperson for Johnson told reporters Britain would press on with negotiations to try to resolve the issues with the so-called Northern Ireland protocol that governs post-Brexit trade with the province.

As expectations grow that London might resort to that option, Frost said the best way of avoiding it was "if we can reach an agreement, an essential agreement... that provides a sustainable solution". He said there was a "significant" gap between the EU and the UK on the matter and that time was running out for his negotiations with Sefcovic.

Reporting by Guy Faulconbridge in London, Christian Levaus and Johnny Cotton, Jan Strupczewski in Brussels and Elizabeth Piper in Glasgow; Writing by Gabrela Baczynska; Editing by Jan Harvey, William Maclean

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

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EU warns Britain: Don't press the emergency Brexit button - Reuters UK

Nowhere is that mistrust more palpable, diplomats said, than between Mr. Macron, a 43-year-old former banker, and Mr. Johnson, a 57-year-old onetime journalist. In both London and Paris, there is a sense that the relationship will not get fixed as long as Macron is in the lyse Palace and Johnson is in No. 10, said Peter Westmacott, who preceded Mr. Ricketts as Britains ambassador to France.

Britains departure from the European Union was a particular blow to Mr. Macron because it upset the power balance that had existed between the blocs three big states: Britain, France, and Germany. Now Mr. Macron is struggling to assert Frances leadership in a Europe dominated by Germany.

France and Macron have made the E.U. such a central pillar of their domestic and foreign policy, said Georgina Wright, a British expert on relations between France and Britain at the Institut Montaigne, a research organization in Paris. It is very difficult for him to cooperate with the U.K. government which continues to have a very antagonistic tone toward the E.U.

At home, Mr. Macron is leading in the polls but faces a robust challenge from the right. His main rivals all express skepticism about the European Union, though none argue for a split from the union. ric Zemmour, a provocative far-right TV star and writer who has shot up to second place in most polls, has said that Britain won the battle of Brexit and argues for a stronger France within Europe. So does Marine Le Pen, the leader of the National Rally, who is polling third.

Confronted with these challenges, Emmanuel Macrons message is to assert that being a member of the union entails obligations and rights, and that France takes part in all aspects of European politics, said Thibaud Harrois, an expert on French-British relations at the University of Sorbonne Nouvelle.

Unlike in Britain, however, where tensions with France preoccupy Downing Street and supply grist for headlines in pro-Conservative tabloids, Mr. Macrons hard line toward Britain is mainly a political calculation. There is little evidence that anti-British sentiment galvanizes the broader population.

For London, however, the fights over fish augur a much larger battle over its relationship with the European Union. Britain is now expected to upend its agreement with Brussels over how to treat Northern Ireland, which awkwardly straddles the trading systems of Britain and the union.

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With Fish, Trucks and Submarines, U.K. and France Bicker Over Brexit - The New York Times

The British government has played down hopes of a breakthrough in a row with France over post-Brexit fishing licences, despite European perceptions of a constructive spirit and positive dynamic.

The French transport minister, Jean-Baptiste Djebbari, said he had spoken to his UK counterpart on Tuesday evening. The spirit is a constructive one, he said, noting that French fishers had been granted 49 more licences on Monday.

But a UK government spokesperson said the Brexit minister, David Frost, would reaffirm our existing position when he meets Frances Europe minister, Clment Beaune, in Paris on Thursday to discuss the issue.

Tensions could be eased, however, by a French court ruling on Wednesday that a British scallop dredger seized by French authorities last week could leave immediately with no requirement to pay a 150,000 (127,000) deposit.

The rancorous dispute over French fishing rights in the six to 12-mile zone from the UK shore and around Guernsey and Jersey has helped take British-French relations to a post-Brexit low.

The European Commission sounded a more optimistic note. Officials from the UK, France, Jersey and the commission have been meeting for the past two days, a spokesperson said on Wednesday. These talks have allowed us to chart the way forward on several aspects and have created a positive dynamic aiming at a solution.

The spokesperson said technical talks would continue on Wednesday, including with some officials from Guernsey. The talks have allowed for better understanding of the outstanding issues, which have been impeding quicker progress and we hope that the positive engagement on all sides will soon translate into concrete results, they said.

UK government sources said they were going to the meeting on Thursday with a solutions focus but cautioned against expecting any big breakthrough. While not ruling out progress, they said they did not anticipate all the issues would be resolved at the Paris meeting.

A UK government spokesperson said Lord Frosts response to Beaune would reaffirm that vessels must provide the relevant evidence if they want to receive a license [sic] to fish in our waters and that our licensing criteria and methodology remains unchanged.

They added: We remain open to considering new evidence and will continue to talk to the French government, EU commission and Jersey authorities, as we have been doing for months.

Only days ago the dispute had threatened to tip into a trade war. The French president, Emmanuel Macron, announced that talks would continue on Monday as he stepped back from a threat to impose full customs checks on UK goods and ban UK boats entering some French ports from 2 November.

Beaune then invited Frost for an in-depth discussion over the difficulties in applying the agreements between the EU and the UK in Paris on Thursday. Beaune said last week that the language of strength seems to be the only thing this British government understands.

The two men clashed on Twitter over the weekend, both setting our their claims as to why the other side was in breach of the post-Brexit trade agreement.

Frost said the UK government had granted 98% of fishing licence applications and was acting in good faith to meet its obligations. He said that if the French threats were implemented, the EU would be in breach of the post-Brexit trade and cooperation agreement (TCA).

Beaune countered that more than 90% of licences had been granted for the EU as a whole, but the missing ones were all French. After 10 months, when such a significant amount of licences, targeting one country, is missing, its not a technical issue, its a political choice and a breach of the TCA, he said.

Under the trade agreement, French fishers can continue to fish around the Channel Islands and six to 12 miles off the UK shore until 2026 as long as they obtain a licence from British authorities.

To receive that licence they must provide evidence of having fished in those waters between 2012 and 2016, but Britain and France have disagreed over the kind of evidence required. France says the requirement for GPS data is unfair on small boats, which do not have the equipment. The UK government says it determines the evidence required, while stressing there is no deadline to submit proof to get a licence. Jersey said it had granted the 49 licences issued on Monday on a temporary basis.

The prime ministers official spokesperson said the government was keen to discuss the Northern Ireland protocol with Beaune. Asked what success would look like at Thursdays talks, he said: We are seeking substantive changes to the protocol with the EU. These changes are necessary because the protocol as its currently being enforced is extremely damaging to the people of Northern Ireland and the businesses therein.

He insisted relations between the UK and France remained friendly.

The UK and EU are deadlocked over revising the Northern Irish protocol, the Brexit agreement that kept the region in the EU single market and customs union to prevent a land border. Frost is due to meet the European Commission vice-president Maro efovi for further talks on Friday, as both sides try to settle the issue before the end of the year.

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UK set to take inflexible line over Brexit fishing row in next talks - The Guardian

In the war of words over fishing rights in the Channel, much attention has been paid to a single line in a leaked letter from Jean Castex, the French prime minister, to Ursula von der Leyen, president of the European commission.

The nuances of the offending sentence vary in translation, but the gist is that European public opinion should be left in no doubt that there is more pain associated with leaving the European Union than staying in it.

To the Eurosceptic ear, that was confirmation of a spiteful motive on the continent. France, it was alleged, wants to punish Britain for choosing freedom. Viewed from the other side, Castex was merely restating the obvious logic of Brexit: it is a repudiation of European solidarity and a bet on the advantages that a sole trader might gain in rivalry with a syndicate. The syndicate members have an interest in that gamble not paying off.

British Eurosceptics are weirdly prickly about that banal strategic fact. It is simply the corollary of their own florid rhetoric down the years, denouncing Brussels as a parasite that saps national vitality and extolling Brexit as proof of EU obsolescence the first step in a great unravelling. Self-evidently, the European project is bolstered if Boris Johnson is humbled, and vice versa.

In the fisheries dispute, France deserves an ample portion of blame for cynical escalation. President Macron is sabre-rattling with an eye on his domestic audience ahead of elections next year. But his attitude is coloured by seething contempt for a British prime minister whom he sees as a stranger to probity. That feeling was much aggravated by the recent poaching of a lucrative defence contract to build Australian submarines as part of the Aukus security deal with Washington. But it is Johnsons treatment of the Northern Ireland protocol in the Brexit withdrawal agreement signing a treaty with no intention of implementing its terms that convinced the French president that Downing Street had gone full rogue.

The crisis in Northern Ireland is vastly more dangerous than a kerfuffle over cod. But they are symptoms of the same syndrome: a Brexit model that makes a sacred principle of sovereignty. All trace of EU institutional leverage must be scoured from the land and dredged from the sea. That fixation guarantees tension at every frontier where old, free-flowing habits are subject to the friction of new checks, forms and licences.

The material gains from maximising sovereignty in this way are nil, while costs are mounting. But conceding that the model is flawed is unthinkable in Johnsons Tory party. Or rather, unsayable. There are MPs who understand what has gone wrong but anticipate only ostracism if they were to speak out. That leads to two policy choices. First, exaggerate or invent fictional benefits from scrapping EU rules. Rishi Sunak dabbled in this with his budget speech last week, disingenuously presenting cuts to alcohol duty as a Brexit dividend. (Booze classifications will indeed diverge from European directives, but the accompanying price drops would still have been permitted.)

Second, turn international rancour to domestic political advantage: cite cross-Channel disputes as proof of Brussels malevolence, then rebadge the economic pain intrinsic to Brexit as a vindictive backlash from the continent. Already this tactic is being rehearsed in Northern Ireland. What the EU calls implementation of a signed agreement, Eurosceptic hardliners denounce as a blockade.

It is a feasible political strategy, albeit a nasty one. But it lacks one crucial element: the heroic destination. Throughout history, revolutionary movements have made excuses for their failures by blaming foreign sabotage. But they have also sustained momentum with visions of a utopian future. That was the Brexit method, too, for as long as EU membership could be made the scapegoat for a whole range of social and economic ills. Now the ills remain but the proposed remedy has already been taken.

In that sense (and only that one) Brexit is a victim of its own success. Britain cannot get any further out of the EU. David Frost is scraping the sovereignty barrel. The Tory awkward squad that hounded David Cameron into a referendum, and then harried Theresa May out of office for seeking compromises with economic reality, got all they could have wanted from Johnson. They know their battle is won and are saddling different hobby horses, riding out to new fronts in the culture war, grumbling about the cost of cutting carbon emissions in the tone they once used for Brussels red tape.

Johnson has tried to sustain the rhetoric of Brexit as sunlit upland. His party conference speech last month promised a high-wage, high-skill economy that would spring up in the absence of migrant labour. But that was an essay-crisis utopia, cobbled together from scraps of news about labour shortages and broken supply chains. Besides, by far the most memorable thing Johnson ever promised about Brexit is that he would get it done. That legacy is diluted every time the issue foists itself into the news, as will keep happening.

The hunt for purer sovereignty will generate tension with neighbouring countries, which will then be cited as proof that only the purest sovereignty will suffice. This is not the typical revolution where the ends can justify the means. The ends have already been reached. EU membership has expired. We are stuck instead in the purgatory of endless means: a sisyphean nightmare of rolling negotiations that reach a certain point of agreement before breaking down and restarting. Johnsons Brexit condemns Britain to re-enact forever the tedious, embittered process of leaving with no hope of satisfaction, because we have already left.

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Boris Johnson has condemned Britain to replay Brexit on a loop - The Guardian