Barnier throws a dead cat at Elgin marbles.

Solemn, statesmanlike and accomplished M Barnier has apparently issued a new demand as a condition for a trade deal in what would look like a hissy fit in anyone less cosmopolitan urbane, skilled etc.  First, however, the EC made:. 

an attempt to win back the Parthenon marbles for Athens. [via]...The latest draft of the EU’s negotiating position calls for both sides to “address issues relating to the return or restitution of unlawfully removed cultural objects to their countries of origin”...[and]...both Greek and EU officials...[insisted]...that the clause, proposed by Italy, Spain, Cyprus and Greece, was not related to the marbles held by the British museum but merely to a desire to stop the fraudulent movement of antiquities around Europe.

Next,  Barnier's reply to a speech by the UK's negotiator, D. Frost:

Frost had set a tough line on EU demands by claiming the consent of the British public would “snap dramatically and finally” if the UK continued to be bound to the EU rulebook after December 2020. The latest EU negotiating mandate says those level playing field provisions should further develop “over time”. ...Barnier’s response, and that of other EU officials, was one of polite fury.

Yesterday, el Grudnia included more detail:

[Frost] insisted that the ability to break free from the EU’s rulebook was essential to the purpose of Brexit... the fundamentals of what it means to be an independent country,” he said. “It is central to our vision that we must have the ability to set laws that suit us – to claim the right that every other non-EU country in the world has.”...we only want what other independent countries have....a relationship of equals.”...he hoped to dissuade the EU’s chief negotiator, Michel Barnier, from the view that Brexit was about “damage limitation”.

Not weaselly enough, obviously, and far too challenging an idea. Independence? Quoi? Barnier revealed his own EC-defined notion of sovereignty:

Asked if Frost was right in his speech on Monday night to say that agreeing to such alignment in a trade deal would be undemocratic, Barnier told reporters: “Truly not. It is a sovereign decision of the EU, it is a sovereign decision of the UK to cooperate [ie obey] … That is what Boris Johnson wrote in the political declaration.”

As an indication of the statesman-like way in which talks are proceeding:

One senior EU source likened the [Greek marbles] row as throwing a “dead cat” on the table to divert attention from the fallout from Frost’s comments.

We are well used to dead cats imported from Australia by now -- but from the skilled, urbane, cosmoplitan accomplished etc etc Barnier?