Brexit Bulletin: Could Coronavirus Force Johnson to Delay?
Brexit Bulletin: Could Coronavirus Force Johnson to Delay?
(Bloomberg) --
What’s Happening? With coronavirus spreading, speculation is growing that Boris Johnson might need to delay his post-Brexit trade deal.
A delay is definitely not what the U.K. prime minister wants. And, so far, both the British and European Union sides have played down the chances of it happening. As Michel Barnier, the EU’s chief Brexit negotiator, said on Thursday, “There is no ban on meetings.” But that was last week—before millions of people in northern Italy were put on lockdown.
Can the Brexit talks stay immune? It’s increasingly hard to imagine. Mujtaba Rahman of Eurasia Group sees three issues: Travel restrictions could hamper face-to-face talks; the U.K. could be unwilling to put any additional burdens on businesses already grappling with coronavirus; and the virus impact could swamp the machines of government both in Brussels and London.
But a delay would bring its own complications. Johnson has expressly ruled one out. If he doesn’t think he has a good chance of a deal by June, he has threatened to walk and let the U.K. crash out of the EU at the end of the year. As a sign he wants to press ahead, the U.K. said Monday it plans to produce a draft free-trade agreement before the next round of negotiations, in London on March 18-20.
A hold-up still looks unlikely—Rahman puts the chances at 15% now instead of just 10%. But odds have a habit of moving fast. If Johnson presses pause, he faces the unpalatable prospect of having to pay into the EU’s budget. Might the bloc demand, say, £350 million a week?
Beyond Brexit
There’s a lot going on in the world today. Here’s what you need to know.
- A dramatic market rout spread from oil to bonds and stocks, with equities falling 7% on both sides of the Atlantic.
- Oil fell 30% after Saudi Arabia and Russia dug in for a long, bitter price war.
- Spain’s tally of coronavirus cases almost doubled. Here’s where the outbreak is spreading.
- You don’t want the virus in your lungs. Here’s how Covid-19 kills.
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Brexit in Brief
No Waiver | Key sectors in the U.K. trade machine—including haulage, shipping and freight industries—are angry at the government over a refusal to seek security waivers from the EU needed to smooth cross-channel freight after Dec. 31 this year, the Telegraph reports.
CAA-EU Later | Transport Secretary Grant Shapps signaled that the U.K. also plans to leave the European Union Aviation Safety Agency (EASA). Responsibility for aircraft certification would revert to the U.K.’s Civil Aviation Authority, Shapps said. These moves are in line with U.K. pledges to “regain in full our political and economic independence.”
Divided | The U.K. cabinet’s Brexit supremo, Michael Gove, identified fisheries, governance and dispute settlement, and the so-called “level playing field” as areas of “significant differences” between the two camps. European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said it was “up to the UK within the negotiations to think about the trade-offs they want to take into account.”
The Long Goodbye | The new album from Riz Ahmed, a 37-year-old rapper and actor, tells the story of Great Britain as a girlfriend who throws him out. The Atlantic describes the record as representing “U.K. rap’s post-Brexit heartache.”
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To contact the editor responsible for this story: Adam Blenford at ablenford@bloomberg.net
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