Brexit trade deal clash: UK and EU spar over rules
LONDON/BRUSSELS (Reuters) - The European Union and Britain clashed over a post-Brexit trade deal on Monday, with the two sides setting out very different visions of a future relationship that could result in the most distant of ties.
Almost three days since Britain officially left the EU, both sides presented their aims, with the question of whether London will sign up to EU rules to ensure frictionless trade shaping up to be the defining argument of the negotiations.
Both want to secure a trade agreement, but Britain has set a deadline of the end of the year and the EU has warned that if Prime Minister Boris Johnson wants a no-tariff, no-quota deal, he will have to sign up to its rules to ensure fair competition.
Johnson said he would not do that, in a speech that harked back to Britain’s past trading successes, promising that his government would again be a champion of free trade and jealously guard his country’s new-found “sovereignty”.
“Humanity needs ... some country ready to take off its Clark Kent spectacles and leap into the phone booth and emerge with his cloak flowing as the supercharged champion of the right of populations of the earth to buy and sell freely among each other,” he said, referring to Superman’s alternate character.
Saying Britain was ready “for that role”, he went on to say London was ready to accept an agreement with the EU, the world’s biggest trade bloc, similar to that enjoyed by Canada, whose rules are not aligned with those of the EU.
“There is no need for a free trade agreement to involve accepting EU rules on competition policy, subsidies, social protection, the environment or anything similar, any more than the EU should be obliged to accept UK rules,” Johnson said.
Promising to maintain “the highest standards”, he said that if such a deal was not achievable “then our trade will have to be based on our existing Withdrawal Agreement with the EU”.
“The choice is emphatically not ‘deal or no-deal’. The question is whether we agree a trading relationship with the EU comparable to Canada’s – or more like Australia’s,” he said in the Painted Hall at the Greenwich Royal Naval College where grand 18th Century paintings celebrate Britain’s naval power.
At the moment, much of EU-Australia trade runs along basic World Trade Organization rules, though there are specific agreements for certain goods. Australia is in the process of negotiating a trade deal with the 27-nation EU.