Some excitment yesterday about the prospect of a deal. Friday's Newsnight promised that E Maitlis would be giving her views (frank at least) on Monday. Oh good.
The Guardian explainer is quite informative about the sticking points:
[There were] new EU demands resulting from French lobbying.
The EU was said to have started pushing for further and harder assurances over the role of a UK regulator of subsidies, or state aid...The EU wants all its funding from Brussels to be exempt from state aid rules, unlike Treasury funding....It also wants the domestic regulator to be given the power to approve or block subsidies based on shared EU-UK principles written in the treaty. A failure of the regulator to abide by the principles would give the EU the opportunity to unilaterally hit back through tariffs on British goods or even suspension of part of the trade deal.
Some problems here. What EU funding would remain to be exempt from UK rules -- short term stuff until our contributions finally stop altogether? What is implied exactly? The domestic regulator would be a sort of local ECJ? Haven't the EU realised yet? The EU would reserve the right to break the terms of the deal if they saw a breach in regulation -- but wouldn't that damage their international reputation for fairness and all that? No further comment from the Graun?
This seems more explicit:
France has said it will not tolerate a deal that provides a possible competitive advantage for UK businesses in the European market place....some European capitals were getting jittery about the lack of information on the most contentious parts of the deal: access to UK fishing waters and the maintenance of a level playing field through equivalent subsidy control regimes and standards over time.
It seems now to be a matter of face-to-face talks between Johnson and von der Leyen, between an elected Prime Minister and an...er..."elected" President of the EU who will then consult national leaders. France is threatening to veto.
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