This post was originally published on this site
The Brexit show goes on. The actors all show signs of stress and fatigue and the audience has deserted, if only because there have been more pressing economic calamities to tend to in the last few months. But it goes on nonetheless, and U.K. and European Union negotiators are meeting once again this week to try to hammer out a compromise between positions that seem to have grown wider apart of late.
This is, however, an important act in the long-running drama, because the U.K. has to decide before the end of the month whether or not it wants to request an extension beyond December for the so-called “transition period” it entered on Jan. 31 when the country formally left the EU. Since then, the country has remained a member of the EU in all but legal terms, subjected to the same obligations and exercising the same rights as other members, but deprived of a seat at the table where EU decisions are made. This is the situation that Britain’s hard-core Brexiteers don’t want to last, because it prevents the U.K. from “taking back control,” as promised in their victorious 2016 referendum.
The EU, on the other side, had always warned that 11 months wouldn’t be enough to strike an ultra-complex deal that involves setting up a comprehensive free trade treaty, but also concluding many other side agreements to keep the current relationship alive in all areas where the two sides want to keep it so. Chief EU negotiator Michel Barnier recently reiterated that he is ready to agree to an extension. The U.K., on the other hand, has been steadfast in its refusal to even consider the idea, a principle that Prime Minister Boris Johnson even asked Parliament to put into law late last year, just in case.
It is now hard to see how the talks could go on much beyond the end of the year. An extension would be the sensible thing to do, if it meant giving some time to both parties to find the way to a good compromise. But, on the other hand, it would be pointless, and just a waste of time, if there is no serious chance of such an outcome.
What that means is that either the U.K. and the EU will agree before December on a bare-bones basic free trade treaty, with many economic disruptions to expect throughout next year, or they won’t even be able to do that, which means that the U.K. will add the pain of Brexit to the coronavirus disaster. Europe, too, will pay an economic price for no-deal, but it will be much smaller, in relative terms, than the mayhem it will unleash on the U.K.
Granted, many things can still happen by then, and one should never underestimate both U.K. and EU politicians’ talent to strike last-minute compromises they then frame as major political victories, general disbelief notwithstanding. But as the weeks go on, that possibility is slowly fading away.
