Britain suggests it may overturn parts of the EU withdrawal agreement
If this is a negotiating tactic, it is unlikely to work
Britain
Sep 7th 2020
IT HAS LONG been clear that trade negotiations between Britain and the European Union are making no progress. On the main sticking points, access to British fisheries and the EU’s wish to constrain state subsidies to ensure fair competition, neither side seems ready to compromise. But the British government has now dropped a new bombshell by apparently planning to publish a new bill on September 9th that will, if no trade deal is agreed on by the end of the year, override parts of the withdrawal agreement, a treaty signed earlier in 2020, relating to trade between Great Britain and Northern Ireland.
Northern Ireland was the biggest problem in the first lot of Brexit negotiations, because both sides wanted to avoid border controls with the Irish Republic that might upset the Good Friday peace agreement of 1998. After Boris Johnson took over from Theresa May as prime minister last year, his solution was to keep Northern Ireland alone in line with the EU’s customs code and single-market rules. The withdrawal agreement makes clear that this means customs checks between Northern Ireland and Great Britain. Yet Mr Johnson has repeatedly denied that there will be a border in the Irish Sea. His new bill—reported in the Financial Times and described as a tidying-up exercise by officials—seeks to overturn the withdrawal agreement’s requirement for export declarations on goods moving from Northern Ireland to Great Britain, and also to scrap a provision that Britain must provide details of state subsidies for firms operating in the province.
Why is Mr Johnson doing this now? The charitable explanation is that he still wants a trade deal, and is merely trying to ratchet up the pressure on EU leaders to make enough concessions to get one. His talk of October 15th as a deadline for agreeing to a deal, after which he would walk away, and his insistence that no deal would be good for Britain are all part of the same tactical game. His unsubtle message is that, unlike Mrs May, he will not blink at the last minute, since for him no trade deal (or, as his government likes to call it, trading on Australian terms) is an acceptable outcome.
Yet if this is tactical manoeuvring, it seems unlikely to work. Ursula von der Leyen, the European Commission’s president, has already said that, unless existing agreements are respected in full, there can be no future deal between the EU and Britain. As the smaller partner facing a much bigger market, Britain has more to lose from the failure to reach a trade deal, which would mean not just new non-tariff barriers but tariffs too. Experience suggests that the EU, the world’s biggest market, does not respond well to threats from those it is negotiating with.
Moreover, by casting doubt on the implementation of an existing treaty, Britain is inviting not just the EU but the world to see it as an unreliable partner. Its chances of securing a trade deal with America would surely disappear: congressional leaders have already said that, if Brexit upsets the Good Friday agreement, they would veto any free-trade agreement. Other countries can be expected to be similarly dismayed. As Brexit itself has shown, the right way to change a treaty is to negotiate with its signatories, not to pass unilateral domestic legislation in breach of it. The government’s bombshell is making a deal at the end of the year ever more unlikely.