06 March 2018

The Guardian: EU Brexit adviser deals blow to Theresa May's free-trade proposal

Stefaan de Rynck, the main adviser to the EU’s chief Brexit negotiator, Michel Barnier, stressed that the rules of the single market required far more than her chief proposal – a mutual recognition of standards.

May claimed in her speech last Friday that the UK could negotiate a future trade relationship based on mutual recognition of standards overseen by a third party court, made up of EU and UK nominees.

But De Rynck said: “The EU has moved away in the wake of the financial crisis from mutual recognition of national standards to a centralised approach with a single EU rule book and common enforcement structures and single supervisory structures.”

He added that EU rules were clear that the European court of justice could intervene at any point to declare that mutual recognition of standards was undermining the single market’s integrity.

Such principles were neither empty or legalistic dogma, he said, but fundamental to the integrity of the single market and autonomy of the EU.

His remarks, at a special LSE lecture in London on Monday night, are probably the fullest from the European commission since May made her speech and suggest her proposals for a future trading relationship will be dead on arrival, unless EU member states sympathetic to UK interests decide the commission’s interpretation of the single market is too rigid.

De Rynck insisted there was no sign of division among the EU 27 member states or European institutions, warning the UK that “it would be very unwise to break down that unity”.

He also claimed EU businesses, faced by a choice, “are more concerned with maintaining the integrity of the EU single market than any loss of access to British markets”, implying EU business is in no mood to press the commission to compromise in the talks.

He also warned the UK that there was no appetite to extend the talks on UK’s exit beyond the current timetable of March 2019, and if the UK was to seek to rescind its proposals to withdraw from the EU set out out in its article 50 letter, this would not be just be a matter for a UK unilateral move, but require collective response by EU member states. [...]

Full article on The Guardian

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