German chancellor Angela Merkel and French president Emmanuel Macron declined approaches by Boris Johnson to discuss the EU-UK negotiations earlier this week, opting to maintain a unified front, a senior EU official has revealed.
In a joint video conference of the French and German leaders with European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen and European Council president Charles Michel on Monday, the four agreed that separate bilateral talks would be refused so that the bloc speaks with a single voice.
The EU official made the comments after being asked about Mr Johnson’s offer to visit EU capitals for talks. The British prime minister this week told reporters: “I will go to Brussels, I will go to Paris, I will go to Berlin, I will go to wherever to try and get this home.”
Cold response
The declaration also received a cold response from Dutch prime minister Mark Rutte.
"I would invite him to stay in London and work hard," Mr Rutte told reporters when asked about Mr Johnson's idea. "We have our own negotiator, Michel Barnier, so the capitals don't negotiate. We have a Brexit team in Brussels that does those negotiations for us."
The EU negotiating team, led by Mr Barnier, has been given until Sunday to try to find a way forward in the talks with their British counterparts, led by David Frost.
On Sunday, Ms von der Leyen will talk with Mr Barnier and make an assessment as to whether a deal is available that would meet the joint mandate set out by the 27 member states in February, The Irish Times understands.
The commission will then deliver its assessment to the member state governments. Any government can veto a deal if it believes it is unacceptable, and equally, the member states could direct the EU negotiating team to keep trying to find a deal, according to EU sources.
Talks between the two sides resumed on Friday and the EU national leaders received a short briefing on the state of the negotiations by Ms von der Leyen as they met to agree new climate emissions targets and a Covid-19 vaccination plan.
‘Situation is difficult’
Following the briefing, an EU official said the “situation is difficult” and that the main obstacles remain, adding that the “probability of a no-deal is a higher than of a deal.”
Taoiseach Micheál Martin said the main sticking point was how to ensure fair competition between British and EU companies into the future, as the bloc demands comparable standards in exchange for free access to its market, while London insists it does not want to be tied to EU norms.
“It’s within that space that a compromise has to be found and it’s a difficult area, it has been since the beginning of the talks,” Mr Martin said. He added that a deal could be reached if the “political will” was there, but that contingency plans were being rolled out in Ireland for agriculture, fishing and other industries that would be hard hit.
“We are preparing for a no-deal Brexit,” Mr Martin said. “We obviously don’t want a no-deal Brexit but we have to prepare for it. It would be another hit on the economy after Covid-19.”
An agreement reached by the EU-27 to roll out a €1.85 trillion budget and stimulus package means that €5 billion will be available in EU funds to help the countries worst hit by the expected disruption to trade with the UK on January 1st.
The money is the subject of fierce competition between EU member states, and Minister for Finance Paschal Donohoe met with the EU budget commissioner Johannes Hahn in Brussels to lay out the help that Ireland would need in a no-deal scenario.
“We talked about the need for Ireland to be recognised as a country that will be immensely disadvantaged if an agreement is not made, and I also briefed him on the needs that the Irish economy would have if we end up in that situation,” Mr Donohoe said.
