LONDON (Reuters) – Brexit trade talks are still stuck on fishing, governance rules and dispute resolution because the European Union is asking too much, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s Brexit supremo, Michael Gove, said on Tuesday.
Negotiators are trying to hash out a trade deal to avoid a tumultuous finale to the five-year Brexit crisis when Britain finally exits the EU’s orbit in four weeks’ time.
“The EU still wants to take the lion’s share of the fishing in our waters – which is just not fair given that we are leaving the EU,” Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster Gove told Sky.
“The EU still want us to be tied to their way of doing things,” Gove said. “The EU are at the moment reserving the right if there is any sort of dispute not quite to rip everything up but to impose some really penal and tough restrictions on us and we don’t think that’s fair.”
A trade deal would not only safeguard trade but also buttress peace in British-ruled Northern Ireland, though some disruption is almost certain at the busiest EU-UK border points.
Failure to secure a deal would snarl borders, spook financial markets and disrupt delicate supply chains that stretch across Europe and beyond — just as the world grapples with the vast economic cost of the COVID-19 outbreak.
(Reporting by Sarah Young; writing by Guy Faulconbridge; editing by Paul Sandle)
