The Brief – Kicking the (fish) can

The Brief is EURACTIV's evening newsletter

Barring any last-minute hitches, this week’s EU summit will not burn much midnight oil, at least where Brexit is concerned.

In fact, after breakfast on Friday leaders will sign off on a pact that will see the UK officially leave the European Union on 30 March next year. It will then have 21 months as a de facto member until a transition period ends in December 2020.

That a deal has actually been struck will be a relief to businesses on each side of the Channel. For the moment, it suits Theresa May’s government. 

The UK gets the right to negotiate new trade agreements, though it cannot sign any until the end of the transition. That is not much of a breakthrough for London, since its trade department is in no position to broker any ambitious agreements any time soon.

The main benefit for May is that the transition kicks the major problems down the road: the Irish border question, and future trading relations.

The European Commission’s ‘backstop’ proposal on Ireland – which May said ‘no British prime minister could ever agree to’- has been accepted, in case the two sides cannot agree on a better arrangement.

The Irish border dispute has always appeared rather synthetic. The Commission’s rationale is that Northern Ireland must remain aligned with EU rules on goods in order to avoid border controls.

The UK as a whole is likely to want to remain closely aligned to the single market on goods. It is hard to imagine that a compromise, probably involving minor UK concessions, cannot be found.

More intractable a problem, meanwhile, is what to do about fisheries.

UK fisheries have not been well-served by the Common Fisheries Policy, and the industry had long been promised by Brexiteers that it would be one of the first beneficiaries of ‘taking back control’.

That promise was given up by May’s team this week. The fact that the UK will remain signed up to EU fishing quotas until at least the end of 2020 has already caused some chagrin.

“We will leave the EU and leave the CFP, but hand back sovereignty over our seas a few seconds later,” said Bertie Armstrong, chief executive of the Scottish Fishermen’s Federation.

This is a lobby group that punches above its economic weight – the UK’s total catch is worth around €900 million per year. A number of Conservative MPs representing coastal seats in England and Scotland have already threatened to vote down any agreement that doesn’t protect UK fishermen.

To those with long memories, this has eerie parallels with 1973, when the UK fishing sector was traded away by Edward Heath during the talks that led to the UK joining the EEC.

It looks like UK fishermen are about to be shafted again by their own ministers as part of the EU exit deal.

The Roundup

In the run-up to this week’s EU summit, the increasingly direct political rivalry between Macron’s En Marche and Merkel’s CDU is poisoning the atmosphere between France and Germany.

German relations with Poland, the third partner in the Weimar Triangle, on the other hand, seem to be on the up after Merkel’s first visit since her reelection to the Bundesrepublik’s neighbour.

The Commission plans to organise around 500 citizens’ consultations by May 2019. But ideas about what shape the dialogues should take are very different to Emmanuel Macron’s. We wonder what Nicolas Sarkozy’s take on it would be…?

Armenia is one of the few countries that in political and economic terms tied themselves closely to Russia. The EU now aims to clasp the small Caucasus republic back to its bosom.

While Donald Trump may believe that “trade wars are good and easy to win”, it is time for the EU to take the lead in maintaining the global trade system, writes Shada Islam. Lara Friedman thinks Europe should prepare to oppose Trump on the Israeli-Palestinian ‘peace’ plan.

Heating and cooling our homes, businesses and industrial processes makes up half of the EU’s energy demand. But contrary to popular belief, there is more than one solution to Europe’s heating and cooling conundrum, experts say.

The Netherlands has nicked the breeze out of Germany’s sails with an announcement that it will be the first country worldwide to build two offshore wind farms entirely without public money. They are set to come online in 2022, three years before Germany’s..

Not all second-generation biofuels listed by the Commission are sustainable, critics warn, urging policymakers to use the indirect land use change factor to “clean up” the list.

Building walls in order to keep out unwanted visitors has become quite popular lately. But Poland’s planned 1,200km-long behemoth isn’t meant to keep out human beings

Look out for…

The consultative referendum on the Intelligence and Security Services Act 2017 will be held in the Netherlands tomorrow along with the municipal elections. It concerns the so-called “tapping law” on legislation, giving law enforcement authorities far-reaching surveillance powers, amongst others also allowing them to gather data covertly from large groups of people at once.

Views are the author’s

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