Or just sign a deal now. I don’t even see what good any more delays would bring. It’s not like the EU will fundamentally change on LPF or the UK will have a serious political discussion about what might be acceptable to them except ‘sovereignty’. Oh well, we’ll see…
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That really is the heart of it. The EU is by definition extraterritorial vis-a-vis member states, and identifies much of what the UK wants as falling in the realm of the benefits member states accrue for yielding up that sovereignty. Those principles, that definition, was set out at the very beginning and outside the UK was seen from the first as being very hard to reconcile with what Britain appeared to want in a deal with the EU. That obvious point of incommensurability has been reached.
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Have Canada ceded some territoriality in their trade deal with the EU?
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No, but we have nothing close to the level of interaction nor the same seamless trade that the UK currently has with the EU. There is a customs barrier, just one at which a zero tariff is applied - and there are quotas on some goods on either side. Whole sectors are excluded.
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Thanks, so we can say what the EU are demanding is without precedent? Of course a member has never left before as far as I can tell, so there is that. But seems to me this is especially ‘optimistic’ from the EU.
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A German article by Der Spiegel why a Canada deal isn’t working, I couldn’t find an english one but Google translate might help.
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You could easily turn this around and say what the UK is demanding is without precedent.
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You could, only with excluding the key issue of extraterritoriality.
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You can call it that if you like. The EU is an economical superpower. I wouldn’t be surprised if there are demands from the US in UK trade negotiations where some people might be tempted to use similar words.
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Both parties are demanding something without much in the way of precedent. Britain does not want a customs union, but wants more market access than any other arrangement I can think of other than the other EU partnerships. But Britain doesn’t want to surrender the capacities that either Norway or Switzerland have in their arrangements with the EU, while nonetheless wanting more extensive access by some measures than those two agreements provide. The EU position is to me more consistent in terms of conforming to the Norway-Switzerland precedents.
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Sadly the UK wants all the benefits without having to follow any rules.
Pretty sure that was how they wanted (and sold it) from the beginning. EU have just dug their heels in which is not surprising. But I also agree that they are trying to push their luck with certain aspects.
Why not? The UK has.
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It’s all very well citing precedents but they were themselves previously unprecedented. Simply falling back on the “we’ve never done this before” is not a reasonable position to adopt. Even so, some of the commentary regarding the 98% of the deal that is agreed does frame it as an agreement that goes much further than any other deal that the EU has agreed with a 3rd country. Unprecedented, you could say.
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Who is adopting that position? As long as there is understanding that it cuts both ways and doesn’t just end with a ‘yeah, but no, because sovereignty’.
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There’s constantly been the suggestion that the EU can’t do something simply because it hasn’t done it before.
I think one of the other issues is that the UK has long had concerns about agreeing to rules only to see that other parties honour them more in the breach than the observance. You only need to look at the EU’s infringement proceedings taken against EU member states and the time each state takes to abide by those rulings to see that.
It’s one of the smaller details that contributed to my overall position of wanting to leave. I wouldn’t be at all surprised if part of the LPF discussions the UK will be raising the issue that the EU will be looking to ensure compliance from the UK whilst doing little about compliance of its own member states. I appreciate that there has been some belated moves to address this but from a UK point of view it has been a cause of resentment and distrust for some time.
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unprecedented precedents. 
Only a lawyer… 
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It is a valid point, Poland, for instance, have arguably been in continual breach since admission. Bribery is widespread in the courts, and their stance on abortion and same-sex relationships, have all escaped enforcement.
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No. The simple point is that it’s disingenuous for some to complain about EU demands being unprecedented and comparing it to previous FTA, while not acknowledging that the UK’s demands are unprecedented as well. But this isn’t about just making a point for the sake of it. It’s about real benefit vs real costs/risks, political and economic.
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By the time the two sides agree on fishing, there won’t be any bloody fish left in the sea.
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Yup, but even on the rules governing the functioning of the single market…it’s ridiculous how large EU member states can continually defy EU rules on a pretty large scale.
To give you an example just take the six largest EU members (including UK as the last data goes to 30 November 2019).
Germany, UK, France, Italy, Spain, and Poland.
The number of cases closed against each of those countries between 1 December 2014 and 30 November 2019 are, in order:
9, 5, 9, 4, 11, 13.
And how quickly on average did each of those countries comply with those EU rulings (in months)?
29.7, 8.6, 25.1, 20.2, 20.5, 25.9
So despite the UK being the 2nd/3rd biggest economy in the EU it has among the lowest number of infringements and is the 2nd quickest to comply with EU rulings (behind only Latvia). Germany and France, on the other hand, each have twice the number of infringements as the UK and take more than 3 times as long to comply.
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I agree that what the UK is asking for is unprecedented. My point was that that in itself is not a reason not to agree. Whenever the options about what the EU was prepared to offer the UK were discussed it was always framed as Norway or Switzerland or Canada as if any deal between the UK and the EU had to follow an existing template. The deal was always going to break the mould.
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