In a key appointment for the negotiation on the relationship between London and the European Union after Brexit, today the President of the European Commission (EC), Ursula von der Leyen, and the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, Boris Johnson, will meet in Brussels .
The objective of the meeting is to give a final push to the commercial negotiation to achieve a pact before the end of the year.
The EC stressed that the meeting between the two leaders will not necessarily mean the end of the negotiations, but rather aims to unblock the situation so that the talks can continue.
At the moment, London and Brussels still do not approach positions on the key issues of guarantees to ensure fair competition between British and EU companies, fisheries and the mechanisms to resolve disputes over the future agreement.
The deadlines to close a pact are increasingly tight, as Community legislation will cease to apply in British territory on January 1 and the United Kingdom will then have definitively become a third country.
London and Brussels must reach an agreement and complete ratification in the UK and the European Union before the end of the year. Otherwise, they will be governed in their trade by the more general and less favorable tariff requirements of the World Trade Organization (WTO).
Johnson warned that negotiations with Brussels are being “very, very complicated.”
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The original text of this article was published on 12/9/2020 in our print edition.
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