EU chief negotiator gives veiled warning of conflict to come as UK white paper is published

The EU has issued a veiled warning that it will not budge on its red lines after Theresa May unveiled her long-awaited Brexit plan.

Michel Barnier, the EU’s chief Brexit negotiator, said he would analyse the UK’s proposals with EU member states and the European parliament “in light of guidelines” drawn up by EU leaders.

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This reference to guidelines was a heavy hint of the conflict to come in Brexit negotiations. The European council guidelines lay down the EU’s red lines, including the insistence that the UK cannot benefit from “cherry-picking” its favourite parts of the EU rulebook.

In a terse message on Twitter, Barnier said the EU had offered the UK an “ambitious” free-trade agreement and cooperation on a wide range of issues, including a “strong security partnership”.



The offer of a free-trade agreement falls far short of British hopes that were finally spelt out in in detail, more than two years after the EU referendum result.

Michel Barnier (@MichelBarnier) We will now analyse the #Brexit White Paper w/ Member States & EP, in light of #EUCO guidelines. EU offer = ambitious FTA + effective cooperation on wide range of issues, including a strong security partnership. Looking forward to negotiations with the #UK next week.

Barnier said he was looking forward to further Brexit negotiations with the UK, which are due to resume on Monday. Following those talks, Barnier is due to meet ministers from the 27 EU member states on 20 July, where they will debate how to respond to the British plan.

EU diplomats had already warned that the white paper proposals would probably not be good enough, while a source who had seen an earlier draft described the UK approach as “cake”, a reference to the former foreign secretary Boris Johnson’s one-liner about being “pro having [cake] and pro eating it”, meaning that it could not be accepted.

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The UK proposal to create a single market in goods is likely to meet resistance in the face of the EU’s longstanding demand that there can be no-cherry picking of its internal market, nor division of its “four freedoms” – goods, services, people and capital. “If we allow this flexibility on the single market, the whole building might crumble,” one EU source told the Guardian.



The British proposals on customs, which are complex and untested, are also likely to run into trouble in Brussels. As part of an attempt to avoid a hard border on Ireland, the UK is proposing to apply EU tariffs to EU goods passing through the UK, while having the freedom to set different tariffs on goods entering the UK.

In carefully chosen language, the UK is describing this unprecedented arrangement as “as if in a combined customs territory with the EU”. But EU diplomats who heard early outlines of the plan said it sounded too close to earlier proposals that were rejected last year.



British officials hope the 98-page document will prompt the EU to soften its approach and put the UK into a different category to other non-EU countries such as Norway or Canada. Now the UK has diluted some of its red lines, it hopes the EU will respond in kind.

The EU maintains that existing British red lines – no jurisdiction of the European court of justice, no free movement of people – mean the only option is a free-trade agreement, similar to those Brussels negotiated with Canada or Korea – a point of conflict with the UK that is subtly restated in Barnier’s tweet.

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So far there is no sign that the EU is ready to change its approach, but officials say they want to read the paper carefully before drawing conclusions.

The European parliament also restated its opposition to any attempt to water down the EU’s internal market. In a statement, the Brexit steering group, led by the Liberal leader Guy Verhofstadt, vowed to stand up for the “integrity of the single market” while firing a warning shot against the UK customs plan. “There will be … no space for outsourcing [the] EU’s customs competences.”

The British government was urged to clarify its positions on a fallback plan for preventing a hard border with Ireland, the so-called backstop, so that the Brexit withdrawal agreement “can be finalised as quickly as possible”.

However, MEPs welcomed the UK government’s hint that it was seeking a Ukraine-style “association agreement” with the EU – a wide-ranging legal arrangement covering economy, security and foreign policy, which is the European parliament’s preferred option.