EU to SNUB May’s bespoke deal and offer UK Canada-style Brexit agreement
THE EUROPEAN Union is set to snub Theresa May’s demands for a bespoke Brexit deal and instead offer a Canadian-style agreement.
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Brussels is looking to offer the Prime Minister a limited exit deal - refusing outright to consider a pick-and-mix style agreement.
Mrs May has repeatedly outlined plans for a bespoke Brexit deal, one which she said will meet the needs of both Britain and the EU.
But Brussels is determined to ensure Britain is not better off outside the European Union.
And now it has emerged negotiators are prepared to offer her a “standard” deal with “limited EU commitments”.
Papers seen by Politico reject Mrs May’s “bespoke” deal request and instead offer at best a “standard” free trade agreement.
The document said this would offer “no direct branching in areas like financial services” and only “limited EU commitments to allow cross-border provision of services”.
It comes after Mrs May was warned her plan for a bespoke deal was doomed to fail.
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Sir Ivan Rogers, the UK’s Permanent Representative to the EU until he resigned in January, said Mrs May’s team had “screwed" themselves with poor tactics.
He said last month the UK would be further “out of the union’s orbit” than even Turkey after leaving the bloc.
Sir Ivan told the Treasury Select Committee: “If you’re no longer subject to the jurisdiction of the court, you’re no longer making contributions to the Budget and you’re no longer respecting the four freedoms … well, that takes Britain substantially further out of the union’s orbit than Switzerland, or Norway or even Turkey.”
He said said other EU leaders would be open to a trade deal with the UK - but on Brussels’, not Westminster’s, terms.
Sir Ivan said: “And therefore in the world they inhabit they’ll say that means what you really want is a DCFTA - a deep and comprehensive free trade agreement.
"And I think they’ll say, ‘we can do you one of those’ but that isn’t a bespoke, unique, British-specific deal, it’s a DCFTA and I’ve done several DCFTAs before and they come with several consequences in terms of market access."
And he said Mrs May had mistepped by activating Article 50 without making more progress with Brussels first.
Sir Ivan said: "If you wanted to avoid being screwed in the negotiations in terms of the sequencing, if I can put it brutally, you had to negotiate with the key European leaders and the key people at the top of the institutions and say: ‘I will invoke Article 50, but only under circumstances where I know exactly how its’ going to operate’.
"That’s not what we did. "