Britain and the EU will on Monday agree a major post-Brexit reconciliation, but haggling over key details including fisheries, food trade and youth mobility dragged on into Sunday evening as both sides engaged in eleventh-hour brinkmanship.
A historic summit at Lancaster House in London will see both sides sign a security and defence partnership, the centrepiece of the “reset” and a recognition that the whole continent needs to pull together to confront the threat from Russia.
Sir Keir Starmer will sign the defence pact and a communiqué promising deeper economic co-operation during a two-hour meeting with European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen and European Council president António Costa.
The EU-UK summit, the first since Brexit took effect in 2020, will be bathed in a spirit of reconciliation, but the talks in Brussels on Sunday were a reminder that the relationship between the two sides is now highly transactional.
British officials said on Sunday evening that “huge progress” had been made in some areas but that “negotiations are going down to the wire”. In Brussels, EU ambassadors were told to prepare for further talks at 10pm.
Details of the EU-UK deal are highly politically sensitive. Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch has warned that Starmer is about to “surrender” British interests.
In Brussels, EU ambassadors demanded more concessions from Britain in exchange for undoing some of the economic damage caused by Brexit, including a deal to preserve long-term access to British fishing grounds for France and other coastal states.
British officials admitted that the EU would not agree to an open-ended deal to remove post-Brexit barriers to trade in food and animals — one of the biggest “asks” of the UK — unless Brussels was satisfied with a deal on fish.
“We want to give confidence to business,” said one UK official, admitting that a time-limited veterinary deal — known as a sanitary and phytosanitary agreement — would leave too much uncertainty for farmers and supermarkets.
There was annoyance in Brussels that Starmer put out a press release over the weekend in which he claimed a deal to cut prices in the shops had already been agreed. “That isn’t the case,” said one EU diplomat on Sunday.
However, Britain has conceded that removing barriers to trade in foodstuffs will require the UK to “dynamically align” with rules made in Brussels, and also make a financial contribution to the EU to fund work on food and animal standards. Conservatives claim this is a “betrayal” of Brexit.
Meanwhile, the EU is also trying to get Britain to sign up to an ambitious youth mobility scheme — including better access for students to UK universities — in a “common understanding” communiqué to be issued alongside the defence pact.
The EU has warned Starmer that it will not make it easier for British touring musicians to travel across national borders in Europe or for UK travellers to use passport e-gates unless he is bolder on youth mobility, according to officials briefed on the talks.
Starmer has conceded that a youth mobility scheme will happen, but is trying to keep the language in the communiqué vague, allowing detailed talks about controversial areas such as numbers and student fees for further negotiations later this year.
Downing Street said the Lancaster House summit would include an agreement to cut “queues on holiday”, with European relations minister Nick Thomas-Symonds confirming on Sunday he was looking for a deal to allow the use of e-gates at borders.
But a second EU diplomat denied the request — which was also previously made by Starmer’s predecessor Rishi Sunak — had been granted.
“Starmer sees some of the outcomes of the summit as a done deal already which is not the case, and he wants to appear as a dealmaker,” the diplomat said.
“UK negotiators need to show they really want a reset on a ‘win-win’ basis, and not only look at potential gains for one side only.”
One person involved in talks on the EU side said the discussions had always been expected to go to the wire. “The British are tough negotiators. But we should get a deal in the end.”
EU diplomats complained of Starmer’s recent tactics to force a deal. Late last week British ministers called counterparts in EU capitals to push for a deal, bypassing the commission — which one diplomat dubbed a “divide and rule tactic”.
While both sides were trying to extract concessions from each other on Sunday evening, the talks will not derail an overall agreement. Where issues are unresolved, British officials say that they could be “kicked into the long grass” for further talks later.
Details of the final text are expected to be published at midday on Monday, but Starmer and his EU interlocutors will be at pain to stress areas of agreement, rather than the painful last-minute haggling by their negotiators on Sunday.
Additional reporting by Barbara Moens in Brussels
