BRITISH PRIME MINISTER Boris Johnson is holding talks with European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen in an attempt to inject new momentum into flagging negotiations on a post-Brexit trade deal.
The high level meeting will take place by video conference call after the two sides agreed to an “intensified” negotiating timetable as the clock counts down to the end of the current transition period at the end of year.
It comes after the EU formally accepted on Friday that the UK would not seek any extension to the transition which allows Britain continued access to the EU single market while talks continue.
Johnson is expected to say that the talks need to be “swiftly concluded,” providing the public and business with certainty on the way forward by the autumn at the latest.
While he will insist the UK still wants to strike an “ambitious” free trade agreement, he is expected to make clear that it is ready to start trading on World Trade Organisation rules from 1 January if a deal cannot be reached.
Von der Leyen will be joined on the conference call by European Council president Charles Michel and the president of the European Parliament David Sassoli.
The Cabinet office minister Michael Gove and the UK’s chief negotiator David Frost will be with Johnson.
It will be followed by a series of weekly talks at official level for five weeks commencing 29 June looking at detailed technical issues.
It is hoped that they will for the first time in these negotiations include face-to-face meetings, with both sides acknowledging that the remote discussions, due to the coronavirus epidemic, have gone as far as they can.
Four rounds of video conferencing discussions made only limited progress with a series of major obstacles still to be overcome.
Mostly notably the two sides remain far apart on the issues of future access to UK fisheries and the so-called “level playing field”, the extent to which Britain is required to follow EU rules and standards in return for access to the single market.
The prospect that they will be unable to reach an agreement has alarmed business groups who warn that firms reeling from the impact of the coronavirus lockdown are ill-prepared to with a major upheaval in trading arrangements with the UK’s biggest trading partner.
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