To no one’s great surprise, Michel Barnier has made a very downbeat statement following the latest round of UK-EU trade negotiations. He has declared that ‘there’s been no significant progress since the start of these talks’, accused the UK of backsliding on the political declaration and warned that he doesn’t think the talks ‘can go on like this forever.’
Now, in the Q&A session with journalists that followed, Barnier did seem to indicate some flex on the EU’s demand that state aid rules continue to apply in this country after Brexit. He also said that a deal was still possible.
Boris Johnson’s chief negotiator David Frost was not quite as negative as Barnier in his summary of the talks, but he admits ‘progress remains limited’ and that ‘we are close to reaching the limits of what we can through the format of remote formal rounds’.
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