Category: Negotiating

Article 50, Brussels, Michel Barnier, Negotiating, Theresa May

You Can’t Always Get What You Want #Brexit

Posted on by BEERG Brexit Blog

Written on Sunday December 17, 2017

Hammond BoJoOn Friday (Dec 15), the EU Council agreed that “sufficient progress” had been made to date to allow the exit talks between the EU and the UK to be expanded to include discussions on the “framework” of the future relationship between the UK and the EU.

This BEERG Brexit Briefing argues that, just as the EU dictated terms in phase 1, it will continue to dictate terms as the process continues because both the dynamics of the process and the hard economic realities favour the EU.

Why? Because as the Dubliners of my youth would have put it: “Beggars can’t be choosers”. In EU terms, it is the UK, and not the EU, that is the “demandeur” and demandeurs “can’t always get what they want”.

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Article 50, Brexit, Brussels, Juncker, Michel Barnier, Negotiating, Theresa May

Not so Much a Marathon… More a Triathlon #Brexit

Posted on by BEERG Brexit Blog

Written on Friday Dec 8th:

may junckerEarly this morning, Friday, December 8, the EU and the UK announced that they had reached terms on the three Article 50 issues which cover: the UK’s ongoing financial obligations to the EU; the rights of EU citizens in the UK; and issues relating to Ireland.

The EU Commission said that the agreement reached was sufficient to allow it to recommend to the EU Council (heads of government) next week that the talks proceed to phase 2, namely discussions on the “framework” of the UK’s future relationship with the EU.

Reading the various documents that have been released today it is hard not to come to the conclusion that the UK appears to have accepted the EU’s terms on all three issue. Outstanding payments from the UK to the EU are not conditional on any sort of future trade deal and will continue long into the future as commitments made by the EU28, of which the UK was a part, fall due. On citizens’ rights the European Court will have a role in defending the rights of EU citizens resident in the UK for eight years after Brexit, a political lifetime. On Ireland, the default position is no hard border.

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Article 50, Brexit, David Davis, Irish border, Negotiating

#Brexit: “Sometimes it seems like they haven’t thought all this through”

Posted on by BEERG Brexit Blog

This article was written on 17th Nov 2017

Hammond BoJoAnother week, another seven days that leaves us little wiser as to what happens next. With each passing day it becomes ever clearer that the UK government fundamentally misunderstands the position it has placed itself in as regards exiting the European Union.

This misunderstanding is such that, as of today, there would appear to be only two possibilities open to the UK.

The first is to leave the EU in March 2019 without an agreement as to its future relationship with the EU and, therefore, obliged to conduct trade with the EU within the framework of the World Trade Organisation (WTO) rules.

The second possibility is to accept a free trade agreement modelled on the agreement the EU has recently signed with Canada. That agreement basically covers trade in goods, resulting in a reduction in tariffs of some 98%, and mutual recognition in regulated professions such as architects, accountants and engineers, and easier transfers of company staff and other professionals between the EU and Canada.

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Article 50, Brexit, British Government, Negotiating, Theresa May

#Brexit, a Dickensian example of: “Please sir, can I have less?”

Posted on by BEERG Brexit Blog

This article was written on Oct 29, 2017.

Sir-Ivan-Rogers-776583If the absence of economic rationality, as a driving force behind Brexit, was ever in question, comments this week from three very different speakers should put an end to the doubt.

First, the French ambassador to the US, Gerard Araud tweeted:

“Maybe I am too cartesian but leaving the largest free trade area in the world and 53 free trade agreements on behalf of free trade is weird.”

Indeed, much too logic. But that’s the French for you.

Second, Michael Bloomberg, the billionaire founder of Bloomberg and former mayor of New York commented:

Brexit is the “single stupidest thing any country has ever done…it is really hard to understand why a country that was doing so well wanted to ruin it”

Third, and most significantly, speaking to a House of Commons committee, Sir Ivan Rogers, the former UK ambassador to the EU (Photo above with David Cameron), who resigned earlier this year after warning against “ill- founded arguments and muddled thinking” in the UK’s approach to leaving the EU, said: Continue reading →

Article 50, Brexit, Divorce, Negotiating, Theresa May

On #Brexit: You can’t always get what you want…

Posted on by BEERG Brexit Blog
This BEERG Brexit Briefing (#16) was written on Sat Oct 21, 2017

Hammond BoJoWords and phrases can shape reality.

How we describe an issue or event can determines how that issue or event is to be understood. Such “framing” can be particularly important when we are dealing with some something unique, something that has never happened before. How do you describe the unknown? How do you explain the unprecedented?

One way of doing so is to compare the unknown to something known and familiar. This, in the UK at any rate, is what many journalists, commentators and academics have done when writing about Brexit, an unprecedented and unknown event. They have taken to describing the Article 50 discussions between the EU and the UK as being akin to divorce proceedings, with the key argument being about money: how much will the UK have to pay the EU as part of the “divorce settlement”?

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Article 50, Brexit, British Government, Irish border, Negotiating

Breaking up is so very hard to do #brexit

Posted on by BEERG Brexit Blog

Brexit4Over the past number of years, I have been involved, on the management side, in many European-level labour negotiations. But one particularly comes to mind.

The employees’ representatives on the other side had cancelled an agreement that had been in place for close on 20 years. It wasn’t a perfect agreement, it had drawbacks for both parties, but it worked reasonably well in practice.

Further, it was always possible to negotiate small, but important, changes to the agreement as circumstances evolved, old provisions became outdated and new issues and organisational changes needed to be taken into consideration.

In other words, the other side did not need to cancel the agreement but could, instead, have worked on improving it. But they were advised that negotiating a new agreement would be easy and that it would be a lot better than what they then had. Five years on, a replacement is not yet in place.

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Brexit, Negotiating, Theresa May, UK Labour Party

“Plan for the Worst: Hope for the Best” – the Fading Hope of #Brexit Deal

Posted on by BEERG Brexit Blog

Posted on Friday, Oct 6th 2017:

4221396001_5597581765001_5597568337001-vsThe major party conferences have come and gone and still we are no wiser as to how Brexit is going to unfold. As we noted in last week’s Briefing, the Labour Party’s policy appears to be that they will deliver Brexit, but a Labour Brexit, not a Tory Brexit, whatever that means. Brexit is Brexit and Brexit means being outside the European Union (EU), the single market and the customs union.

However, Labour is in opposition and, so, for the moment what it says is important but nowhere near as important as what the Conservative government says, as it is charged with negotiating the Brexit arrangements with the EU. Whether it can get whatever deal it negotiates, if any, through Parliament, especially the House of Lords, is another matter.

This week’s Conservative Party conference was dominated by three issues:

  1. Brexit;
  2. Who is going to succeed Theresa May as Conservative leader, and when;
  3. and Labour leader, Jeremy Corbyn.

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