LONDON — According to the players, Brexit talks are "on a knife's edge." It's "down to the wire." It's "crunchtime."
Though Britain officially left the E.U. in January, it didn’t quite leave. What it did was begin an 11-month transition period that ends at midnight on Dec. 31. That was supposed to give the sides time to craft a trade deal to continue the orderly movement of goods and services. It was supposed to avert the kind of last-minute chaos and uncertainty now unfolding.
Negotiators met in London over the weekend and on Monday were back at it in Brussels. “Time is in very short supply,” said Jamie Davis, spokesman for Prime Minister Boris Johnson.
Johnson and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said “significant differences” remained after a conversation between them Monday evening. But a Downing Street spokesman confirmed that Johnson would travel to Brussels, the E.U. capital, later this week to try to close a deal.
If they fail, Britain and Europe could soon see new customs duties, tariffs, border checks and quotas on goods — and an ignominious end to decades of free, frictionless trade.
Britain crashing out without a deal could also undermine the open, invisible border between the Republic of Ireland, a member of the E.U., and Northern Ireland, a part of the United Kingdom.
President-elect Joe Biden and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) have both warned Johnson not to do anything that could force a hard border to return to the island.
But the specific sticking points of the talks appear far more narrow.
The two sides are arguing over European access to fish in British waters, an emotional issue that taps into issues of sovereignty, even though the fisheries sector accounts for a tiny fraction of Britain’s gross domestic product.
There have been proposals to slowly reduce the number of European fishing trawlers in British seas. Should the phaseout be three years (a British proposal) or 10 years (a French proposal)? Stay tuned.
The Europeans, too, are pressing to maintain a “level playing field,” to stop Britain from undercutting worker protections and environmental safeguards, or granting state subsidies to British businesses, potentially giving U.K. companies unfair advantages over their European competitors.
Meanwhile, the Johnson government on Monday pushed its controversial Internal Markets Bill through the House of Commons. The legislation is supposedly designed as a safety net to protect trade among England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland. But its provisions break international law by reversing the original Brexit treaty signed last year.
On Monday, the government offered an olive branch, saying it would ditch the controversial clauses in the bill if the two sides reach an agreement.
Ireland’s foreign secretary, Simon Coveney, described the overall mood as “very gloomy.”
The Irish minister told his state broadcaster, RTÉ, “I’d like to be giving more positive news, but, at the moment, these negotiations seem stalled, and the barriers to progress are still very much in place.”
The British Foreign Office was a little less glum. Minister James Cleverly told the BBC the U.K. would keep negotiating “for as long as we have available time or until we get an agreement.” He said negotiations “often go to the last minute of the last day.”
“We are a global player. We are one of the biggest economies in the world. We are a real prize for many countries,” Cleverly said, adding, “I think if the E.U. recognize this, they will see that actually making a few small but significant concessions can get this deal done and that will be in their interest and our interest.”
Diplomats in Brussels, confronted with spiraling crises, say Brexit was long ago supplanted as their most burning issue.
Nor is it even the trickiest negotiation they are facing in Brussels this week, amid acrimonious talks with two of the E.U.’s own members, Hungary and Poland. The two countries, whose commitment to democracy is increasingly shaky, have vetoed the entire $2 trillion E.U. budget because the other members want to make receiving funds conditional on adhering to the rule of law.
But even if Brexit is no longer at the top of the agenda, it is still urgent. Any deal would need to be approved by E.U. leaders and a handful of parliaments before Dec. 31.
E.U. officials familiar with the negotiations said there was an agreement among themselves to halt talks Wednesday, regardless of their outcome, although such deadlines could easily be bargaining tactics.
“It was always going to go beyond any reasonable deadline,” said one senior E.U. diplomat, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to detail frustrations with the British approach.
Another senior diplomat noted Monday that the summary of outstanding issues — fishing rights, state aid to industries and which body will enforce the deal — could easily have described most of the entire last year of negotiations.
“If that sounds familiar to you, it is because there has been no decisive progress made so far,” the diplomat said, briefing reporters on the talks under ground rules of anonymity.
Will Jennings, a professor of political science at the University of Southampton, said it was “very difficult” to know what was going on in negotiations because “both sides are giving briefings that tell different stories.”
He said it was a “strange political moment” because “it’s incredibly salient for key decision-makers” but “the public seemed almost to have moved on.”
He said there was a tendency, with E.U. and British politicians “to take things to the brink and the last minute . . . like students handing in term papers,” but it was also difficult to know whether the government really wants a deal.
“The notions around Brexit are so wrapped up around sovereignty and taking back control,” he said, that there are “huge tensions around the integrity of Brexit and the grubby compromises of international negotiations.”
Birnbaum reported from Riga, Latvia. Karla Adam in London and Quentin Ariès in Brussels contributed to this report.
