Britain threatens to walk from EU trade talks

The UK’s chief negotiator flags action if the EU doesn’t drop its demand that Britain follows Brussels’s rules after Brexit.

Britain could walk away from trade negotiations with the EU, its chief negotiator has warned. Picture: AP

Britain will walk away from a trade deal if the European Union does not drop the demand for it to follow Brussels’s rules after Brexit, the UK government’s chief negotiator has warned.

In his first public comments before talks next month, David Frost urged European leaders not to view Boris Johnson’s hard line stance on EU regulations as a “negotiating position”.

However, as an olive branch he suggested that the UK might be prepared to make unilateral commitments on environmental, social and state aid standards as part of a Canada-style free trade deal. His remarks will be seen as a hint at compromise, with less than nine months to conclude a deal.

The EU is expected to drop demands for the UK to adopt European laws introduced after Brexit. But France and Germany, among others, insist that Britain follow existing EU rules under “level playing field” provisions.

In a speech at a university in Brussels Mr Frost insisted that the UK’s objections to following such rules was not because the government wanted to relax standards. Instead it was a question of democratic legitimacy.

“How would you feel if the UK demanded that, to protect ourselves, the EU dynamically harmonise with laws set in Westminster and the decisions of our regulators and courts?” he asked. “We bring to the negotiations not some clever tactical positioning but the fundamentals of what it means to be an independent country. If the EU wants a durable and sustainable relationship … the only way forward is to build on this approach of a relationship of equals.”

Both sides could build on provisions in the EU-Canada deal of 2016, with non-regression clauses committing them not to undermine standards, Mr Frost added, suggesting that such clauses, which include workplace and competition policy, could be strengthened because Britain and the EU were starting from an identical regulatory baseline.

“The reason we expect provisions based on free trade agreement is not that we want a minimalist outcome on competition laws,” he said. “It is that the model of an FTA (is) the most appropriate one for the relationship of sovereign entities in highly sensitive areas relating to how their jurisdictions are governed and how their populations give consent to that government.”

EU officials have questioned how non-regression pledges would be enforced. But Mr Frost said that unless the EU was prepared to move from its public stance then the UK would walk away from the talks.

“It is central to our vision that we must have the ability to set laws that suit us – to claim the right that every other non-EU country in the world has.

“So to think that we might accept EU supervision on so-called level playing field issues simply fails to see the point of what we are doing. It isn’t a simple negotiating position which might move under pressure – it is the point of the whole project.”

The Times