Britain’s chief negotiator, David Frost, has accused Brussels of treating the UK as an “unworthy” partner by offering a low-quality trade agreement that he says would force the country to “bend to EU norms”. In an extraordinary letter to the EU’s chief negotiator, Michel Barnier, the prime minister’s envoy says Brussels’ proposal that EU state aid rules be part of British law is “egregious” and “simply not a provision any democratic country could sign”. He further accuses Barnier of demanding unprecedented oversight over British laws and institutions through “novel and unbalanced proposals”, in an intervention that will heighten fears that the talks are now destined to fail. The letter, sent shortly after the publication of the UK’s draft trade and security treaty, highlights the tension at the heart of the negotiation over Britain’s future relationship with the EU after a series of poor rounds of videoconference talks. The British negotiator seeks to reassure Barnier that he is not trying to negotiate with the member states through publication of the legal text but to “clear up any misunderstandings about the purpose and effect of what we have put to you”. Frost says the EU demands would tie the UK to Brussels’ labour, environmental and social standards while offering a trade deal that fails to match those signed with others in reducing barriers to trade in animal products, motor vehicles, medicinal products, organics and chemicals. He writes that the UK government’s proposed free trade deal is very close to that signed with Canada. The draft fisheries proposal is akin to that between the EU and Norway, he claims, and on aviation he says the UK is not seeking more than that given to other non-EU countries. “Given this reality, we find it perplexing that the EU, instead of seeking to settle rapidly a high-quality set of agreements with a close economic partner, is instead insisting on additional, unbalanced and unprecedented provisions in a range of areas, as a precondition for agreement between us. Overall, we find it hard to see what makes the UK, uniquely among your trading partners, so unworthy of being offered the kind of well-precedented arrangements commonplace in modern [free trade agreements].” In response to the EU argument that proximity and levels of trade require the UK to remain close to Brussels rules, Frost says Britain is less integrated than Switzerland, Norway or Ukraine and the argument on geography “amounts to saying that a country in Europe cannot expect to determine its own rules … and that it must bend to EU norms”. Earlier in the day, Michael Gove had said that success in the fourth round of the talks starting on 1 June depended upon “the EU recognising that the UK is sovereign”, after a notable lack of progress in last week’s talks. Barnier, in turn, welcomed Downing Street’s “transparency” after being blocked by the British government during the recent negotiations from sharing the text with the member states, adding that the bloc had already made its text public “over two months ago”. Pedro Silva Pereira, who is part of a cross-party group of MEPs overseeing the talks on behalf of the European parliament, said the negotiations needed a “political wake up call”. “And it is Boris Johnson who needs to wake up”, the Portuguese MEP said. The last chance to agree an extension to the transition period will come in June but Frost writes that the government does not believe it would be in British interests to stay in the customs union and single market after the end of the year.
Without a replacement deal, both sides will fall back on the World Trade Organization’s most favoured nation tariffs, which means duties on everyday food items from cheese to beef of more than 40%. The UK’s 291-page draft comprehensive free trade agreement was among the multiple Brexit papers made public by the government covering everything from aviation and fisheries to social security coordination and law enforcement. On level-playing-field provisions, so central to the EU’s proposal, the UK text contains a cut-and-paste from the EU’s trade deal with Canada stating merely that it would be “inappropriate to encourage trade or investment by weakening or reducing the levels of protection” in current labour laws and standards.
Neither the EU or the UK could “waive or otherwise derogate” from its own laws if the motivation is to win an economic advantage but there is nothing to prevent Britain from lowering its standards if it wished to do so. On state aid, a significant interest within the EU, the UK’s paper simply affords Brussels the right to “express its concerns” and request consultation. “The responding party shall afford full and sympathetic consideration to that request,” the document says.