U.K. Fires Broadside at EU Before Start of Post-Brexit Talks

(Bloomberg) --

The U.K. launched an unprecedented attack on the European Union’s conditions for a post-Brexit trade deal, with Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s envoy warning the bloc’s demand that Britain be bound by its rules after its departure risked undermining democracy.

In his first public appearance in his role as Britain’s chief Brexit negotiator, David Frost dismissed Brussels’ position that Britain should abide by EU rules as part of any trade deal, saying it “simply fails to see the point of what we are doing.”

“We must have the ability to set laws that suit us,” Frost told an audience of academics and students at the ULB university in Brussels on Monday. “It isn’t a simple negotiating position which might move under pressure -- it is the point of the whole project.”

With negotiations between the two sides set to start next month, Frost’s dramatic intervention highlighted the gulf between the two sides and drove the pound to its weakest level of the day against the dollar.

After leaving the EU on Jan. 31, Britain has just 11 months to reach a trade agreement with the bloc or it will default to trading with the EU on World Trade Organization terms -- meaning tariffs, quotas and customs checks would return for the first time in a generation. Frost reiterated on Monday that the U.K. will not extend the current transition period.

The EU says any deal hinges on the U.K. signing up to commitments to stop it undercutting the European economy, which the bloc could then police through its own courts. But the U.K. says sticking to the EU’s rules -- known as the “level playing field” because it would force Britain to accept the bloc’s standards in areas such as public subsidies, environmental rules, and labor conditions -- is unfair and goes beyond the conditions the EU imposed in previous trade deals with Japan and Canada.

“Democratic Consent”

“We only want what other independent countries have,” Frost said. If the EU were forced to accept what it is demanding of Britain, he suggested, “democratic consent would snap, dramatically and finally.”

Under Johnson, the U.K. is taking a less conciliatory approach to its EU negotiations than under his predecessor Theresa May. Frost’s public exposition of Britain’s strategy contrasts sharply with the secretive way the government conducted talks on the country’s withdrawal over the past three years.

The EU is still deciding its own position on the negotiations, with a series of internal discussions by diplomats scheduled to end on Wednesday. The bloc is considering demanding that the U.K. not only sticks to the EU’s current rules, but also agrees to tougher ones if the EU stiffens its own in a whole host of areas from food hygiene to data protection and labor law.

In a signal of where a compromise might eventually come, Frost said the U.K. wants “open and fair competition provisions” based on precedents in other free trade deals. In its deals with Canada, Korea and Japan, the EU lifted almost all tariff lines, but didn’t force any of the countries to abide by its state-aid regulations or to follow any future changes to its rule-book.

“It’s possible to be a political partner and economic competitor,” Frost said, adding that the U.K. would next week outline a detailed vision of is relationship with the EU. “It’s good for a country to have its own fate in its own hands.”

--With assistance from Nick Baker.

To contact the reporter on this story: Ian Wishart in Brussels at iwishart@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Ben Sills at bsills@bloomberg.net, Edward Evans, Richard Bravo

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