UK does not fear no-deal, chief negotiator warns EU
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London/Brussels — Britain will not blink first in Brexit trade negotiations with the EU and is not scared of a no-deal exit at year’s end, the country’s top Brexit negotiator has warned the bloc.
Britain left the EU on January 31 but talks have so far made little headway on agreeing a new trade deal for when a status-quo transition arrangement ends in December.
“We came in after a government and negotiating team that had blinked and had its bluff called at critical moments and the EU had learnt not to take our word seriously,” negotiator David Frost told the Mail on Sunday.
“So a lot of what we are trying to do this year is to get them to realise that we mean what we say and they should take our position seriously,” he was quoted as saying.
Talks are due to resume in London on Tuesday but they have stalled over Britain’s insistence that it have full autonomy over state aid and its demands over fishing.
Britain says the EU is dragging its feet in talks and has failed to fully accept that it is now an independent country.
“We are not going to be a client state. We are not going to compromise on the fundamentals of having control over our own laws,” Frost told the Mail. “We are not going to accept level playing field provisions that lock us in to the way the EU do things.
“That’s what being an independent country is about, that’s what the British people voted for and that’s what will happen at the end of the year, come what may,” Frost said.
British foreign secretary Dominic Raab said the week ahead will be a wake-up call for the EU.
“We’ve got to a position where there’s only two points really that are holding us back,” he told the BBC.
UK fisheries has been “pretty much decimated” due to EU membership, he said, and the bloc wants to keep British access to its waters “permanently low”.
“That can’t be right,” he said.
Government intervention
On state aid, Raab said Britain has led the charge against government intervention since the 1980s, but the issue was “an absolutely critical element of policymaking”.
At heart, Britain is pressing one of the EU’s most sensitive buttons — the fear that a post-Brexit Britain could become a much more agile, deregulated free-market competitor on its border ...
Britain left the EU on January 31 but talks have so far made little headway on agreeing a new trade deal for when a status-quo transition arrangement ends in December.
“We came in after a government and negotiating team that had blinked and had its bluff called at critical moments and the EU had learnt not to take our word seriously,” negotiator David Frost told the Mail on Sunday.
“So a lot of what we are trying to do this year is to get them to realise that we mean what we say and they should take our position seriously,” he was quoted as saying.
Talks are due to resume in London on Tuesday but they have stalled over Britain’s insistence that it have full autonomy over state aid and its demands over fishing.
Britain says the EU is dragging its feet in talks and has failed to fully accept that it is now an independent country.
“We are not going to be a client state. We are not going to compromise on the fundamentals of having control over our own laws,” Frost told the Mail. “We are not going to accept level playing field provisions that lock us in to the way the EU do things.
“That’s what being an independent country is about, that’s what the British people voted for and that’s what will happen at the end of the year, come what may,” Frost said.
British foreign secretary Dominic Raab said the week ahead will be a wake-up call for the EU.
“We’ve got to a position where there’s only two points really that are holding us back,” he told the BBC.
UK fisheries has been “pretty much decimated” due to EU membership, he said, and the bloc wants to keep British access to its waters “permanently low”.
“That can’t be right,” he said.
Government intervention
On state aid, Raab said Britain has led the charge against government intervention since the 1980s, but the issue was “an absolutely critical element of policymaking”.
At heart, Britain is pressing one of the EU’s most sensitive buttons — the fear that a post-Brexit Britain could become a much more agile, deregulated free-market competitor on its border ...