Pushing the 11th hour Brexit trade deal to the breaking point, 69-year-old European Union [EU] chief negotiator Michel Barnier continues to push 56-year-old British Prime Minister Boris Johnson to acquiesce to the EU’s demands. Since the Brexit vote June 23, 2016, the EU has made life impossible for the U.K., daring to ask to leave the 27-member union. Britain went along with all the hoopla joining the EU in 1993 but only reluctantly, since the United Kingdom has always been different from the Continent. Britain knew from the get-go that the EU was German and French centric, with the U.K. the odd-man-out, even though the EU welcomed adding Britian’s $3.9 trillion economy to the EU. Once the British public decided 52% to 48% to leave the EU, it was like a bad divorce with EU leaders making it difficult on the U.K. to gain its freedom.
While Britain was part of EU the French fishing industry gained unbridled access to Britain’s territorial waters, something that threatens to scuttle the current deal on a comprehensive trade agreement. Barnier told the European Parliament Dec. 11 that the EU would demand continued access to British territorial waters or the EU would not approve any trade deal with U.K. “If the U.K. wants to cut access to these waters for the European [largely French] fisherman, at any given time, the EU also has to maintain its sovereign right to react or to compensate by adjusting the conditions for products, and notably fisheries products, to the single market,” Barnier said. EU Council President Ursula Von Der Leyen, 62, has showed inflexibility when it comes to the EU fishing industry, demanding access to the U.K.’s codfish.
When Johnson was inaugurated Prime Minister July 24, 2019, it was after years of failure by his predecessor 64-year-old Prime Minister Theresa May who spent three years regretting the June 23, 2016 Brexit vote. May was tossed out of office primarily because she was incapable of delivering Brexit to the British people, because she wanted the U.K. to say in the EU. Johnson ran on a platform to finally complete Brexit, something that happened Jan. 31, 2019. Ever since, the EU and U.K. have been haggling over the terms of a trade deal, including working out the thorny issues of the Northern Ireland border, preserving the 1998 Good Friday Agreement that assured the peace between Northern Ireland and Great Britain. Von Der Leyen and Barnier have gotten everything important, not needing to squeeze Johnson for codfish.
Johnson has every right in the post EU Brexit era to protect Britain’s territorial waters or fishing rights, even if it only accounts for only 0.1% of the U.K. $3.9 trillion Gross Domestic Product. Von Der Leyen thinks that Johnson will cave in on the EU’s continued fishing rights in U.K. territorial waters to perverse the Britain’s rights to access the EU’s free market. “We are at the moment of truth,” Barnier told the EU parliament. “We have very few hours left if we want an agreement,” Barnier said, continuing to pressure Johnson to allow French fisherman access to British territorial waters. While the discussions continue, both sides are posturing in the 11th hour. Whether the deal’s done next week as Barnier insisted is of no consequence to either side other than to get more last-minute concessions before an artificial deadline.
EU officials have continued to talk tough up till the bitter end when both sides must accept the final divorce settlement. Up till the end, it’s about coercing the other side to make more concessions. But Von Der Leyen and Barnier know that the U.K. is no longer part of the EU and has a right to its territorial waters. “Our door is open, we’ll keep talking,” Johnson said on British TV. “We hope that our EU friends will sense and come to the table with something themselves,” referring to the unreasonable demands made on Johnson to keep primarily French fisherman open access to British cod. EU thinks it made concessions to return to Britain 23% of the fish it catches in British waters. Johnson wants the EU to give back 60% of the fish it catches in British waters. Haggling over cod shows how low things have gone.
EU officials have to get over their insult that the U.K. decided leave the once 28-country economic union. EU officials never really understood the long history of wars on the European continent, dragging Great Britain into wasteful wars and unthinkable horrors over the long history dating back to the Roman Empire. When you consider the price paid over the centuries and more recently, the EU should graciously grant accept the U.K’s more than generous offer to the $17 trillion economic bloc. Von Der Leyen and Barnier have plenty of resources to stop squeezing the U.K. on codfish. EU officials need to let go of the past and move into a new era of accepting the sovereignty—and rights—of the U.K. to control its own desitiny. Johnson wants the EU to honor Britain’s rights to its own territorial waters.
