A “no deal”? There is “One in a million chance that the UK will leave the European Union [UE] without agreement ”, launched Boris Johnson in June 2019. He was still only an aspiring prime minister and referred to the divorce treaty between London and Brussels – which was finally ratified at the end of 2019, after many adventures. The one that must now be approved by December 31 at the latest concerns the “future relationship” between the two parties.
Yet it is the same man – the hair still unruly, the language as flowery – who launched Thursday, December 10 from Downing Street, when the twenty-seven leaders of the EU met in Brussels for their last European summit in the year, that“There is now a strong possibility” for the UK to fail to complete a free trade agreement on time. ” It is very, very likely ”, he again launched Friday, the British and the companies ” must prepare “.
Should we take the British Prime Minister at his word? His detractors, in the Labor Party and in the ranks of opponents of Brexit, readily mock this conservative known for his sometimes approximate report. Had he not assured the North Irish, at the end of 2019, that there would be ” no control “ customs officer in the Irish Sea after Brexit? In recent days, London and Brussels have put an end to the terms of application of the “Northern Irish protocol”, a central element of divorce, which confirm the contrary.
It is true that after nine months of intense discussions, Europeans and British have still not succeeded in agreeing on the conditions of access of European fishermen to British waters (an economically marginal subject but with strong symbolic significance), nor above all on the conditions of fair competition between their economies, the Twenty-Seven conditioning access without quotas or customs duties to their enormous internal market, to an alignment of London with their environmental or social rules. Wednesday, December 9, following a discussion ” frank “, Boris Johnson had left Brussels without being able to move Ursula von der Leyen on these competition issues. On Friday morning, the President of the European Commission herself judged that the “Probability of a ‘no deal’ is now higher” than that of a deal.
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