A day trip to Brussels
Lots of words have been spilled, some much more usefully than others, on the subject of David Davis's Brussels "humiliation". Having promised the "row of the summer" over the order of Brexit negotiations, Davis appeared to have given in to the EU timetable last Friday, and it was confirmed today.
As has been described hundreds of times, and as I tried to describe on Mayday (!), The UK government was expecting to negotiate withdrawal from the EU and the future UK-EU relationship (seen only in trade terms) in parallel streams, while the EU wanted to complete the withdrawal arrangements before starting on anything so complex as trade.
Every now and then a government spokesperson, usually Davis himself, has proclaimed support for the parallel negotiation idea from somewhere within the EU27, but it has been a single voice. The 27 have maintained a united front on the basic structure of the talks, though here might be some disagreement on how "significant" the progress on withdrawal should be before the EU Council issues a directive to allow Barnier to move on to stage 2.
Some seemed to think there were still chinks in the EU armour...
No 10 originally believed they had France + Germany on board for a parallel process - EU has said no way— Laura Kuenssberg (@bbclaurak) June 19, 2017
Which makes you wonder how many times No 10 has to be told before it takes something on board.
So now May's team has accepted the sequential model for talks and we have a basic timetable for dozens of negotiators and lawyers to hammer out the detail for Davis and Barnier to present to the world about every four weeks. Davis still talks as if the later parallel part defines the process - they'll still be discussing Ireland right at the end, he says, because the trade and legal relationships will have to be known before the border across Ireland can be finalised. But fewer people seem to be believing him.
Davis ended by throwing the EU's own maxim back at it - nothing is finished until everything is finished - as if it proved his point. But we're talking about more than one agreement, and Barnier reminded us that a trade deal can only be finalised by the EU with what it calls a "third country", which the UK will become only after withdrawal.
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| A little Brexit tête-à-tête |
We can still expect the occasional row over the coming months until the edges are knocked off the two positions and a bit of shared realism emerges (perhaps).
And finally...
I've been publicising the EU's web pages which contain all the documents relating to the negotiations and complaining that the UK doesn't have a similar resource. It turns out that there is one, but they haven't really shouted about it.
We'll have to keep count as the work proceeds.
Time for Article 50 process: 24 months— Ed Wilson (@eddwilson) June 19, 2017
Time gone so far: 3 months
Time at end for parliaments: 6 months
Progress made: A timetable#c4news
