Britain and the EU have taken a step forward toward striking a historic trade and security deal after a breakthrough in a telephone call between British Prime Minister Boris Johnson and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen.
In a joint statement yesterday, Johnson and Von der Leyen said that the two sides had a responsibility to keep on talking on the outstanding issues, with sources claiming that common ground was being found.
“We had a useful phone call this morning. We discussed the major unresolved topics,” the leaders said.
Photo: EPA-EFE
“Our negotiating teams have been working day and night over recent days, and despite the exhaustion after almost a year of negotiations, despite the fact that deadlines have been missed over and over, we think it is responsible at this point to go the extra mile,” they said.
“We have accordingly mandated our negotiators to continue the talks and to see whether an agreement can even at this late stage be reached,” they added.
The crunch call appears to put the troubled talks on a new trajectory, days after Johnson said it was “very, very likely” that the UK would exit the transition period without an agreement.
Sources said that the two sides found fresh agreement over clauses in a potential deal designed to ensure neither side could undercut the other as they set their own regulatory standards.
The negotiations between the teams led by the UK’s chief negotiator, David Frost, and his EU counterpart, Michel Barnier, had run until midnight on Saturday and resumed at 9am yesterday in Brussels.
There were early signs yesterday morning that negotiators had moved together on the issues of fair competition and EU access to British fishing waters.
However, Downing Street insisted that all was “hinging” on the telephone call at noon Brussels time.
Speaking after talking with the British team in Brussels, British Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs Dominic Raab said that for all the creativity of the negotiators in the Belgian capital, the negotiation would live or die depending on the outcome of the leaders’ conversation.
“We want to be treated like any other independent self respecting democracy. If you can accept that at a political level, then there’s every reason to be confident, but there is still I think a long way to go,” Raab said.
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