Q&A: What are the main sticking points with Brexit?
EU's chief negotiator Michel Barnier in Westminster, London. Picture: PA
Are you sick of it? You could be forgiven if so but Brexit has not finished yet and repeated roadblocks in the negotiations have caused the mood to seriously dampen with talks going down to the wire.
According to reports, 95% of the deal is there to be struck but three outstanding topics, fisheries, governance, and the level-playing field continue to delay the agreement.
Trade deal or not, the government is seriously concerned about gridlock in the UK landbridge impeding the transfer of Irish goods to Europe from next month.
Government sources have acknowledged that delays in processing paperwork by UK authorities will lead to long delays for Irish hauliers.
"The landbridge is a day-one, month-one danger," a senior source said last night. "We don't have a work-around from UK traffic jams."
With British prime minister Boris Johnson set to meet European Union (EU) Commission president Ursula Von der Leyen this week in an attempt to bridge the gap between both sides, what are the issues at stake that are impeding the trade deal negotiations?
Despite their small economic size, fisheries has attained symbolic importance for British sovereignty in the public mind and is one of the three issues impeding progress. There is a reason former UKIP leader Nigel Farage took to the Thames in the Brexit referendum all the way back in 2016.
Reports of back and forth haggling over access to UK fishing waters have followed the talks since their outset with the amount of EU fishing boats allowed to enter British waters, the quota of fishing stock they may take, and the duration of access still up for negotiation.
The EU reportedly requested access for up to 10 years for their boats which the UK rejected in favour of a proposal of three years subject to review.
This gets to the heart of the Brexit campaign as political leaders in Britain have demanded the freedom to operate a political economy independent of competition rules in the EU's single market.
Basically, Britain wants the right to subsidise certain industries such as manufacturing or energy production in their national interest and want to do so as independent from the EU. This also ties into agreed standards for environmental regulation, workplace standards, and workers' rights.
The EU is concerned a large economy competing nearby to the bloc could undermine their economic interests with State aid policies but Britain has insisted the EU must recognise their freedom to implement policies of their choosing outside of European regulation.
However, if Britain wants to retain access to the EU's Single Market for business and trade, they need to abide by EU regulations. You can see why this has dragged on for so long.
Should Britain or the EU accuse the other of breaking any rules of the trade agreement, the means of resolving the issue is still up in the air. The EU wants the European Court of Justice to adjudicate but the UK objects to this. The jurisdiction of the ECJ is another area which has attained symbolic importance for the Brexiteers.
This is related in particular to the level-playing field as it is the subject most likely to draw dispute in the future as Britain led by the Conservative party lines up extensive state aid policies to develop the north of England's economy having captured the Labour Party's so-called "Red Wall" last year in a dramatic general election.
The EU has placed a lot of importance on this as a trade deal would grant British companies access to the single market and it does not want it distorted by unfair competition.
Significant economic turmoil and trade disruption is predicted. The long-term impact could be costly for both Britain and the 27 remaining EU member states.
A no-trade deal would wipe an extra 2% off British economic output in 2021 while driving up inflation, unemployment, and public borrowing, Britain’s Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) has forecast.
The OBR said tariffs under WTO rules and border disruptions would hit parts of the economy such as manufacturing that were emerging relatively unscathed from the Covid-19 pandemic.
According to economic research by insurer Allianz in November, a hard Brexit — a sharp, disorderly split — could cost the EU as much as €33bn in annual exports, with Germany, the Netherlands and France hit the hardest.
The shock would be felt unevenly across continental Europe, with those likely to be hit worst including Ireland, the Netherlands, Denmark, France, Germany, Sweden, Portugal, Poland, the Czech Republic Cyprus, Malta, and Hungary.
Both sides want to avoid a hard border between the British province of Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland, which is in the EU. Implementing the Northern Ireland protocol, which is part of the withdrawal agreement under which Britain left the EU on January 31, will be complicated without a trade agreement.
Under the treaty, Northern Ireland remains, in effect, in the EU’s single market for goods and aligned to its customs rules after December 31 — unlike the rest of the United Kingdom.
Exactly how checks, regulations, and paperwork will work between Britain and Northern Ireland is not yet clear. But without a trade deal, the divide between Britain and Northern Ireland would become more distinct.
Brexit without a trade deal could allow Northern Ireland to become a back door into the EU’s single market, thus raising the spectre of a hard border on the island of Ireland for the first time since the Good Friday Agreement in 1998.
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