Britain warns that it won’t accept EU supervision of its economy
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Britain’s trade negotiator warned Monday that his government would not accept EU supervision of its economy in exchange for close trade ties.
Senior diplomat Mark Frost told academics in Brussels that London intended to set its own laws following Brexit and not follow EU-imposed “level playing field” rules.
“It isn”t a simple negotiating position which might move under pressure — it is the point of the whole project,” he said.
Frost”s speech at the Free University of Brussels took place as EU member states were drawing up a mandate for their own negotiator, Michel Barnier.
Frost, adding detail to the position championed by British prime minister Boris Johnson, said London wanted a typical trade deal of the kind Brussels signed with Canada.
“It is central to our vision that we must have the ability to set laws that suit us — to claim the right that every other non-EU country in the world has,” Frost said.
“So to think that we might accept EU supervision on so-called level playing field issues simply fails to see the point of what we are doing.”
Politico reports Frost saying: “We bring to the negotiations not some clever tactical positioning but the fundamentals of what it means to be an independent country. It is central to our vision that we must have the ability to set laws that suit us — to claim the right that every other non-EU country in the world has.”
“So to think that we might accept EU supervision on so-called level playing field issues simply fails to see the point of what we are doing. It isn’t a simple negotiating position which might move under pressure — it is the point of the whole project,” he adds, signaling again that the level playing field issue is set to be a major crunch point in the talks.
Frost points out that U.K. standards have in some cases been higher than those required by Brussels. And he points out that London is not demanding that EU countries stay aligned with the U.K. in order to protect British standards. “The more thoughtful would say that such an approach would compromise the EU’s sovereign legal order; that there would be no democratic legitimacy in the EU for the decisions taken in the U.K. to which the EU would be bound.”
EU diplomats and officials will likely calculate that the loss of trade for the U.K. as a result of tariffs will be more economically painful for London than it is for the Brussels.
