British Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union David Davis | Yuri Gripas/AFP via Getty Images David Davis: No deal worse for some EU countries than for UK ‘Nobody pretended this would be simple and easy.’

LONDON — Failure to reach a Brexit deal would be worse for the economies of France, Belgium, the Netherlands and Denmark than it would be for Britain, according to Brexit Secretary David Davis.

A no-deal scenario, with the imposition of World Trade Organization tariffs and trade barriers, is expected to be economically damaging for both sides. However, the commonly held view has been that, with around 40 percent of its exports going to the EU, the U.K. would be hit hardest.

However, updating MPs on the Brexit negotiations, Davis said other EU countries understood the importance of U.K. trade to their own economies. He said this particularly applied to countries “on the North Sea littoral" — naming the Netherlands, Belgium, France and Denmark. “All of them know that the impact of no deal would be quite dramatic, more dramatic than for us,” he said.

Taking questions in the House of Commons Tuesday afternoon, Davis also told MPs that “significant differences” remained between the U.K. and the EU on Britain’s financial obligations. Talks on the so-called Brexit bill would go on “for the full duration of the negotiation” and could end with the U.K. not agreeing on the EU’s “legal basis” for the bill, he added.

The U.K.’s negotiators had been “going through the legal basis for each of the claims, because they’re all set on various claims about what voting in certain budgets and certain financial proposals binds us,” he said. “I think, frankly, the outcome of that will be that we will not agree on the legal basis.” Davis told the BBC last week that the U.K. would meet its “international obligations” but that they may be “moral ones, maybe political ones” rather than legal obligations.

While hailing progress in some aspects of the talks, including on citizens’ rights and Northern Ireland, Davis said there was still work to be done, adding: “Nobody pretended this would be simple and easy.”

Insisting that he did not want a no-deal scenario, he nevertheless told MPs that such an outcome would not be “a catastrophe.”

Gently criticizing his EU counterparts, he said: “Sometimes they have to remember they are negotiators, not arbiters … the interests in those other countries is as much engaged in having a deal as ours is and that’s what will drive it in the end.”

Over an hour-and-a-half of questions, Davis came under little pressure from Brexiteers in his own party, despite concessions from the U.K. over the summer, which have seen the Cabinet fully embrace plans for a post-Brexit transition period, accept that there will be some financial obligations, and acknowledge the European Court of Justice could still have indirect influence over U.K. law.

But in a sign of potential alignment between the opposition and rebel Tories, Davis was urged by Labour and by the former Conservative Chancellor Kenneth Clarke to keep the U.K. in the European single market and a customs union during a transition period following Brexit. Davis refused to be drawn on the specifics of the government’s plans for what it calls “an implementation period” after Brexit, but did indicate that he still wanted the U.K.’s future relationship with the EU — the “end game” — to be determined before a transition period begins.

Labour Shadow Brexit Secretary Keir Starmer, who last month said the party wanted the U.K. to remain in the single market and a customs union with the EU during a transition, said the Brexit negotiations were now reaching the stage “where fantasy meets brutal reality.”

Davis challenged Labour over whether they would be willing to pay a €100 billion bill — the top-end estimate of the settlement the EU is seeking — and accused the EU of refusing talks on future relationship matters as a “pressure tactic to make us pay.”

Following the revelation that the U.K. is calling for continuous talks following the September round of negotiations, he added that the U.K. was “ready to do anything to accelerate the process,” but downplayed the importance of the European Council summit in October, which will rule on whether talks have made “sufficient progress” to proceed to the next phase.

“We shouldn’t pin ourselves to September or October, in doing so you are doing the job of the people trying to negotiate against you,” he said.

Davis also said the U.K. would seek to “maintain [an] ongoing relationship” with the European Investment Bank after Brexit.