Marathon Brexit Trade Agreement Negotiations Nearing End

By Guy Faulconbridge, Gabriela Baczynska

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LONDON / BRUSSELS, Dec 23 (Reuters) – Britain and the European Union appeared close to closing a long-overdue trade deal on Wednesday, raising hopes that the parties are ready to avoid a turbulent economic breakdown on New Year’s Day. .

A senior British government source said Prime Minister Boris Johnson was ready to strike a trade deal with the EU, after press reports said an understanding had been reached just over a week before the UK complete its exit from the block.

But neither party officially confirmed that the months of negotiations had come to an end.

A source at the EU Executive Commission said the talks were still ongoing, albeit in their “final stages,” and a bloc official warned against excluding the risk of a “no-deal” scenario on January 1.

Another British government source was also cautious, saying: “Negotiations are ongoing.”

Still, three diplomatic sources from the bloc told Reuters that member states had begun preparing their procedure to implement any agreement from January 1 if an understanding was reached.

Since its official exit from the European Union on January 31, the United Kingdom has been negotiating a free trade agreement with the bloc in an attempt to facilitate its exit from the single market and the customs union later this year.

An agreement would ensure that goods that make up half of the annual trade between the EU and the UK, with a total value of almost a trillion dollars, remain free of tariffs and quotas.

The senior diplomat, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said that EU member states would have to approve a provisional application of the deal with effect from January 1 because there was not enough time for the European Parliament to ratify it.

Much earlier, British Housing Secretary Robert Jenrick said that two major problems, fisheries and competition, still remained to be resolved and that not enough progress had been made to reach an agreement.