UK to demand same terms EU has offered to other countries in Brexit trade talks
Boris Johnson’s chief EU negotiator is set to demand tomorrow that the UK be granted a trade deal on the same terms the EU has given to South Korea, Japan and Canada.
David Frost will make his first public appearance at a speech in Brussels tomorrow.
According to the Sunday Times, Frost will warn that the EU’s push to make the UK stick to its rules will reduce the chances of a deal.
It will be the first of a series of public interventions from Frost who concluded that the secrecy that marked Theresa May’s negotiations with the EU was counterproductive.
Frost will argue that the UK does not want a unique or special deal, but one that includes benefits offered to other countries.
The UK position is that any deal cannot include any regulatory alignment, any jurisdiction for the Court of Justice of the European Union over the UK’s laws, or any supranational control in any area.
The EU is pushing for the UK to commit to alignment on subsidies, comply with its standards on tax and stick to its rules on workers and the environment.
France’s foreign minister Jean-Yves le Drian today warned that the Brexit negotiations were going to be tough.
“I think that on trade issues and the mechanism for future relations, which we are going to start on, we are going to rip each other apart,” Le Drian said at the Munich Security Conference.
“But that is part of negotiations, everyone will defend their own interests,” he said.
At the weekend, the government pointed to previous deals the EU had struck where there was no requirement for regulatory alignment.
In its trade with South Korea the EU removed 99.5 per cent of tariff lines, it removed 99 per cent in its deal with Japan and 98.7 per cent in its deal with Canada. None of the three countries were required to sign up to regulatory alignment, EU state aid rules or workers and environmental rights enforceable through arbitration.