EU warns UK it cannot have a Canada-style trade deal because it is too CLOSE

Top Barnier aide warns the UK it cannot have a Canada-style trade deal with the EU because it is too CLOSE to the continent saying ‘Dover is much closer to Calais than Ottawa is’

  • Stefaan De Rynck, aide to Brexit negotiator Michel Barnier, was in London today 
  • He warned that the UK and Canada were very different in EU trade thinking
  • Told an audience at LSE: ‘Proximity matters, distance matters in trade’

Britain cannot have a Canada-style trade deal with the EU because of its closeness to the EU, a top Brussels bureaucrat warned today.

Stefaan De Rynck, a key aide to EU Brexit negotiator Michel Barnier said the UK’s proximity in terms of both distance and trading relationships put a higher importance on ‘level playing field’ arrangements. 

He spoke in London this morning amid an early trade deal stand-off, with Boris Johnson wanting a Canada-style trade deal which would leave the UK free to diverge from EU rules. 

But in a speech at the London School of Economics Mr De Rynck warned that the UK and Canada were very different in EU thinking.

‘Some in the UK now seem to want to become Canadians. But Dover is much closer to Calais than Ottawa is,’ he said.

‘Proximity matters, distance matters in trade. What also matters is the interconnectedness between our economies.

‘So, in terms of zero tariff, zero quota access, this brings a lot of benefits to the UK economy and with benefits come obligations.’

He added: ‘It’s clear that for us it’s a different ball game that we are playing with the UK to the one that we agreed with Canada in terms of the level playing field.’ 

Stefaan De Rynck said the UK’s proximity in terms of both distance and trading relationships put a higher importance on ‘level playing field’ arrangements

Boris Johnson wanting a Canada-style trade deal which would leave the UK free to diverge from EU rules

Boris Johnson wanting a Canada-style trade deal which would leave the UK free to diverge from EU rules

He was speaking after the Prime Minister’s negotiator David Frost warned that ‘to think that we might accept EU supervision on so-called level playing field issues simply fails to see the point of what we are doing’.

The goal of ‘zero tariff, zero quota’ trade is set out in the Political Declaration agreed by the Prime Minister and the EU in 2019.

But Mr De Rynck said there was concern in Brussels about the Government attempting to deviate from the shared declaration.

A written ministerial statement published alongside the Prime Minister’s major Brexit speech earlier in February was a ‘source of some concern in terms of the level of ambition in the Political Declaration not perhaps being fully met’, he said.

The UK and EU ‘share values such as free enterprise, open economies, social justice,’ he said, adding: ‘Surely it cannot be rocket science to agree common standards.

‘Indeed the idea at the heart of the Political Declaration which has been agreed is having common standards on the issue of the level playing field.’

With a deal needing to be reached by the end of the year, Mr De Rynck warned the talks could get ‘rather difficult’.

‘We have a vast amount of work and we seem to have 10 months to do it, or less than 10 months if you calculate the time for ratification so that everybody can be ready on January 1, 2021 for the new regime,’ he said.

‘I would expect some of these negotiations to be rather difficult, perhaps more difficult that during withdrawal because the scope of issues is so much vaster.’

The scale of the challenge was underlined this week by French foreign minister Jean-Yves le Drian, who predicted the two sides in the negotiations would ‘rip each other apart’.

Mr De Rynck also set out the EU’s position on talks on financial services and security co-operation.

He warned that an equivalence regime for financial services – where one side accepts the other’s regulations are suitably robust – would not mean business as usual for the City.

‘Equivalence is certainly not continuity, it does not exist for every service in the financial sector,’ he said.

‘Equivalence is not something that can make up for the loss of the benefits of the single market.’

On security, he stressed that ‘the closest possible co-operation in this field requires, ultimately, the (European) Court of Justice’ to be involved if there are concepts derived from European Union law – something that Brexiteers will find hard to accept.

 

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