By Elizabeth Piper and Padraic Halpin
LONDON / DUBLIN, Dec 8 (Reuters) – Comments surrounding a chaotic British goodbye to the European Union were multiplying on Tuesday, with just three weeks to go to break a deadlock in trade deal negotiations, and the first Minister Boris Johnson warned that both parties will likely have to accept that there will be no deal.
EU chief negotiator Michel Barnier told a meeting of the bloc’s ministers that he believes a no-deal scenario at the end of the year is more likely now than a pact on trade relations, an EU official and two diplomats told Reuters. .
Irish Prime Minister Micheál Martin deepened the grim picture, saying that unless there is a breakthrough “in the next day or two,” EU leaders meeting in Brussels on Thursday and Friday will have to discuss plans to contingency to face the economic disturbance that would cause a breakdown without a trade agreement.
“Unfortunately, we are faced with the prospect of a no-deal Brexit if something doesn’t change it in the next few days,” Martin told parliament in Dublin.
Johnson will meet Ursula von der Leyen, president of the European Commission – the executive arm of the EU – for dinner in Brussels on Wednesday and try to close the gaps that his negotiators have been struggling with for months.
However, the language of both parties has hardened and both have asked the other to give in before a meeting that is widely regarded as the “last roll of the dice.”
The UK formally left the EU in January, but has since been in a transitional period during which it remains in the single market and the customs union, meaning that the rules on trade, travel and business have remained the same.
It will all end on Dec. 31, and if there is no agreement to protect about $ 1 trillion in annual trade from tariffs and quotas by then, businesses on both sides would be hit hard.
When asked if he will try to close a trade deal until the last minute, Johnson told reporters: “Yes, of course.”
“We are always hopeful, but you know there may come a time when we have to acknowledge that it is time to get the sticks out, that’s the way it is,” said Johnson, using a cricket expression to refer to the end of a match.
In a sign of some movement in the side talks on implementing an earlier treaty on British withdrawal – not the terms of future trade – the two sides said they reached an agreement on arrangements for the Irish-Irish border of the North.
As a result, London said it will remove clauses from the legislation that violated the exit treaty.
“Hopefully this is a sign that the British government is looking forward to reaching agreements,” Irish Foreign Minister Simon Coveney told RTE.
The sticking points in the trade talks are fishing rights in British waters, ensuring fair competition for businesses on both sides, and ways to resolve future disputes.
(Additional reporting by Guy Faulconbridge and William James in London, Gabriela Baczynska in Brussels and Michel Rose in Paris; written by Elizabeth Piper and John Chalmers; edited in Spanish by Carlos Serrano)
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