Smiles and common memories: facing the camera, Wednesday January 8 in London, Ursula von der Leyen and Boris Johnson talked about the European school, in Uccle (south of Brussels), which they both attended as children , and even one or two teachers they still remember. "But I left school before you arrived in 1971", said the president of the European Commission, spontaneously. For their first summit meeting, the two leaders probably had no desire to open hostilities too openly.
However, the new phase of Brexit negotiations, which opens at the start of the year between the European Union (EU) and the United Kingdom, promises to be just as complex and probably just as rough as the long and chaotic sequence (2016-2019), which has just ended. With the British Prime Minister now having a "super majority" in the House of Commons, there is nothing left to stand in the way of Westminster's adoption of the divorce treaty. Brexit strictly speaking will therefore take place on Friday, January 31 in the evening. In just three weeks.
Negotiation of the “future relationship”
The negotiation of the “future relationship” (on questions of trade, security, defense, etc.) between the two parties should then begin. The challenge is enormous: it is a question of redefining ties for the decades to come. Formally, discussions cannot begin before the European Council adopts a formal negotiating mandate by the end of February. But on Wednesday Boris Johnson and Ursula von der Leyen clarified their starting positions.
The line of the British government is clear and hard: Boris Johnson has repeated to the President of the Commission that he wants to complete the conclusion of the "future relationship" by the end of 2020 and that he refuses any extension of the transition period, which begins on 1st February. He even included this last point in the EU withdrawal law being adopted in Westminster (the "WAB"). In addition, it intends to diverge from European rules. "The future relationship must not involve any form of alignment or intervention by the EU Court of Justice", Downing Street said Wednesday evening.
Ursula von der Leyen was just as firm, giving a taste of her negotiating line to students at the London School of Economics (LSE), before whom she gave a speech shortly before her meeting with Mr. Johnson. A negotiation in just eleven months? "It's extremely tight. It will be impossible to complete everything by the end of the year, that’s why we will have to prioritize ”, underlined the president of the Commission. Should we deduce that the questions which will not be settled within this allotted time will be the subject of a second round of discussions?
