Trade talks: For non-British eyes only?

February 25, 2020 / By mobanmarket

Brexit Files Insight

Trade talks: For non-British eyes only?

UK fights back against EU claims it should be frozen out of trade meetings.

Reports that the EU is considering shutting the U.K. out of sensitive briefings on trade policy, following warnings that Britain will become a competitor for striking trade deals post-Brexit, went down predictably badly in London.

Prime Minister Theresa May’s official spokesman today said Britain would not countenance being frozen out of any trade discussions before it leaves the bloc. “While we’re members of the European Union we would expect our obligations but also our rights to be honored in full,” the spokesman said.

But other EU governments are increasingly uneasy about the U.K.’s plans to start negotiating trade deals now. Although London is not allowed to hold such talks unless Brexit is officially completed, “we can do preparatory work with other countries on our future trading relationships,” Trade Secretary Liam Fox said during a visit to Australia last week.

That’s a problem for EU leaders: Just last week, the EU finished a scoping exercise with Australia — the precursor for official negotiations with Canberra that are supposed to start later this year. Brussels is also negotiating, or wants to start, trade deals with India, New Zealand, the Philippines and the Gulf states — all countries that the U.K. would also like to engage with in its search for an early trade harvest.

As Brussels and London are about to become competitors for striking the best deals globally, EU leaders apparently see it as a threat that London has full access to the EU’s briefings, strategies and offers. At least three EU countries have brought up the idea of excluding the U.K. from the trade policy committee, where trade attachés meet on a weekly basis to discuss negotiating strategies and to receive exclusive briefings from the European Commission on the progress of talks.

Although such an exclusion would be a complicated legal tussle, it might ultimately prove justifiable as London’s “preparatory work” — which one diplomat called “pure camouflage” for real trade talks — could be a violation of EU law, sources in the committee said.

Michel Barnier, the European Commission’s Brexit negotiator, shares these concerns. There is a “need for a discussion about the treatment of sensitive information in the context of certain trade negotiations, to which the U.K. would continue to have access to while it remained a full member of the Union,” Barnier told a meeting of European commissioners last month.

This insight is from POLITICO’s Brexit Files newsletter, a daily afternoon digest of the best coverage and analysis of Britain’s decision to leave the EU. Read today’s edition or subscribe here.