EU-UK relations are at a new low ahead of Boris Johnson’s expected election as Prime Minister on Tuesday, and it doesn’t look like they’ll get better any time soon.
Reports of a stormy meeting between the UK’s Brexit secretary Stephen Barclay and the EU’s lead negotiator Michel Barnier last week show how attitudes have hardened. EU officials described the meeting as “bullying” and “bad tempered” and said it was the most hostile encounter in the three years since the Brexit referendum.
Events took a fishier turn this week when Boris Johnson held up a kipper and accused “Brussels bureaucrats” of damaging the UK seafood trade. The European Commission fired back, saying the rules Mr Johnson mentioned were actually UK-imposed, and fell “outside the scope” of EU legislation.
Commission officials are now openly criticising their UK counterparts, with first vice-president, Frans Timmermans, describing UK ministers "running around like idiots" when Brexit negotiations began in Brussels in 2017. He made the comments several months ago for a BBC documentary which aired this week, and which also saw British cabinet office minister David Lidington reveal that the EU secretly offered the UK a five-year Brexit break back in 2018.
And Bloomberg News has seen a Commission document setting out the bloc’s plans to toughen ‘equivalence’ rules for non-EU financial companies. They will be deemed equivalent (and therefore able to access the EU’s single market) only after a “rigorous case-by-case assessment”, while “high impact” countries “present a more significant set of risks which the Commission will need to address”.
No deal? No way
Attitudes towards Brexit are also hardening within the UK parliament, mirroring a trend taking hold across the population.
A poll by the Politico website found that UK voters are now polarised between two extremes: either revoke Article 50 or leave the EU without a deal. Eurasia group analysts say there is a “substantial” risk of a no-deal Brexit, but predict that early elections in the UK are more likely.
Remain-supporting MPs are fighting back against a messy exit by pushing the boundaries of UK law. They voted in favour of an amendment (to a bill originally designed to lay the groundwork for direct rule in Northern Ireland) which would prevent a lengthy suspension of Parliament – a threat Mr Johnson has made in order, he says, to force through no deal. The amendment is being seen as the first challenge to a Johnson premiership, as the only way to avoid the measure kicking in is to restore devolved government in Northern Ireland on or before 21 October.
Back to the backstop
So it could be Northern Ireland that prevents a no-deal Brexit, or that causes it.
Mr Johnson and his rival for the leadership, Jeremy Hunt, have effectively ruled out negotiating on the EU’s ‘backstop’ insurance policy for the Ireland-Northern Ireland border, calling for it to be entirely removed from the draft withdrawal agreement. Mr Johnson told UK radio that he’s against “time limits or unilateral escape hatches or all these elaborate devices, glosses, codicils and so on”, while Hunt agreed, adding: “The backstop, as it is, is dead.”
But Irish prime minister Leo Varadkar sees a solution in the EU’s original backstop, which would apply to Northern Ireland only, though he acknowledged on RTE radio this week that that wouldn’t be popular with the Democratic Unionist Party, which has been shoring up the Tory government.
Mr Barnier met on Friday with Irish foreign minister Simon Coveney to discuss Ireland’s no-deal preparations and to update him on possible concessions the EU could offer to sweeten a deal for the UK. But those concessions – for instance, placing more of an emphasis on “alternative arrangements” for the border, but by no means ditching the backstop – are unlikely to be enough for the UK.
Meanwhile, the UK’s Office for Budget Responsibility stress tested a no-deal Brexit, saying it could cause a recession and lead to £30 billion a year in extra borrowing from 2020-21. And the UK Parliament’s Committee on Exiting the EU warned this week that a ‘no deal’ Brexit “would be the most economically damaging outcome for the UK”. (Sarah Collins)