Europe
12:14 GMT 13.12.2020(updated at 13:44 GMT 13.12.2020) Short url
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LONDON (Sputnik) – UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen agreed to continue negotiations on post-Brexit relations in a telephone conversation.
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“Despite the fatigue of almost a year of negotiations, despite the fact that deadlines have been missed time and time again, we think that the responsibility right now is to make an additional effort,” they say in a joint statement.
Johnson and Von der Leyen addressed the main issues impeding resolution in a call that their respective spokespersons described as “helpful.”
Fishing, fair competition and governance of the future relationship are the three stumbling blocks that continue to stall negotiations 18 days after the end of the transitional period of Brexit, when the United Kingdom will effectively consummate its withdrawal from the EU.
The divergences persist despite the fact that the “negotiating teams” of both parties “have worked day and night in recent days” to unravel the process, according to the note.
But chief executives in London and Brussels are reluctant to throw in the towel as time tightens toward New Years Eve.
“We have ordered our negotiators to continue the talks and review if an agreement can be reached at this late stage,” they said in their statement.
The British Conservative Executive put the Royal Navy on alert, with the mission of protecting the territorial waters of the United Kingdom if there is no post-Brexit agreement by December 31.
The so-called “gunboat diplomacy” was applauded by the most Eurosceptic sectors and vigorously criticized by moderate politicians, including the conservative Tobias Ellwood, who chairs the Parliamentary Defense Committee.
Johnson and Von der Leyen had self-imposed on December 13 as the time when they would announce their position on negotiations that began formally in the spring and have intensified since October.
But the framework of the relationship after Brexit was previously agreed and reflected in the Political Declaration, a companion document to the UK-EU Withdrawal or Divorce Treaty, which was ratified last January.
Irish Prime Minister Michael Martin told the BBC on Sunday the 13th that “97% of the Brexit deal” has already been negotiated.
“It seems to me that the remaining 3% should not be beyond the capacity of both to solve it,” he said in an interview with the British state corporation.
Divergent ideological and political positions frustrate the resolution on the three major obstacles to access to British fishing grounds, the mechanism that prevents and punishes unfair competition and the regulation of the relationship as of January 1, 2021.
Johnson calls for the sovereignty of the United Kingdom to be recognized and the independence of the EU is respected.
The Block of Twenty-seven wants to protect the integrity of the single market in the short and long term.
The United Kingdom officially left the EU last January and opened a transition phase until the end of the year, allowing it free access to the common market and the benefits of the customs union.
Without an understanding before the New Year, the old partners and still allies in NATO will govern their commercial relations under the taxes and tariffs of the World Trade Organization.
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