U.K. Election Result Starts Clock on Brexit Talks With E.U.

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/13/world/europe/brexit-eu-trade-deal.html

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BRUSSELS — European leaders on Friday welcomed the clarity of the British election result, since they, too, want to “get Brexit done.” But Boris Johnson’s substantial majority will only start the clock on new negotiations about Britain’s future trading and security relationship with the European Union.

Few except Mr. Johnson expect the talks to be quick or easy. They can be quick, Brussels argues, if Britain agrees to keep its regulations and tariffs the same or very close to those of the bloc.

But European leaders, in Brussels for the last day of a summit meeting, remain unsure whether Mr. Johnson, with his resounding mandate to ratify his Brexit deal by the end of January, will stick to his campaign pledge to finish any trade negotiation with the European Union by the end of 2020, or whether he will choose next summer to seek a year’s delay for longer talks.

Will this be the Mr. Johnson who vowed once “to die in a ditch” or the Mr. Johnson who reached his draft Brexit deal with Brussels last October by abandoning his red lines over Northern Ireland?

In congratulating Mr. Johnson on his Conservative Party’s decisive victory, Charles Michel, president of the European Council, sounded a note of concern, saying, “We expect as soon as possible a vote by the British Parliament on the withdrawal agreement — it is important to have the clarity as soon as possible.”

So long as the two sides are negotiating, Britain will be in a “transition” period, with its relationship with the European Union essentially unchanged, even if it will legally have ceased to be a member. Mr. Michel said that Brussels “will negotiate to ensure to have a close cooperation in the future with the U.K.,” adding, “The integrity of the single market is a very important issue for us.”

Luxembourg’s prime minister, Xavier Bettel, said, “I hope that Boris Johnson ‘delivers,’ as he said himself during his campaign, because people need to have clarity, and I hope that with yesterday’s results, they do.” He added, “The excuse that there is no clear majority in London doesn’t last anymore.”

But he suggested talks on the future relationship were “not going to be simple.”

Brussels, in its conclusions on Brexit, is demanding a future relationship that “will have to be based on a balance of rights and obligations and ensure a level playing field.” That is Brussels-speak for British regulations and rules that do not diverge too far from Europe’s.

But if Mr. Johnson wants a free hand to make trade deals with the United States and other countries and to position Britain as more of a low-tax, light-regulation economy, Brussels will demand a tougher set of trade restrictions, unwilling to have a large competitor so close with significantly more favorable conditions for business and finance.

European leaders have agreed that the negotiations will be led by Michel Barnier, who also led the Brexit withdrawal negotiations and knows the issues well.

Ursula von der Leyen, the president of the European Commission, the bloc’s executive arm, said on Friday that Brussels would be ready to begin talks on Feb. 1, and that its goals were “zero tariffs, zero quotas, zero dumping.”

Eleven months would be a short time in which to finish a deal, she said, “but this is what we work for.” The talks “will be step by step but in an attitude that says we want to be good neighbors,” she added.

Mr. Johnson may favor a hard deadline, but that will put Britain, which will soon be negotiating from outside rather than inside the European Union, into a weaker position, argued Fabian Zuleeg, head of the European Policy Center, a research institution based in Brussels. The risk is that a quick trade negotiation, considered almost a contradiction in terms by trade experts, could fail, bringing Britain and Brussels back to the prospect of a “no deal” Brexit.

Many British businesspeople — and presumably some of the new Conservative Party members of Parliament from the industrial north of England — will want to be able to trade with Brussels with as little friction and paperwork as possible. That would mean closer alignment to the European Union than harder-line Brexiters advocate.

“One advantage of a closer E.U. relationship is that there would be a better chance of clinching a deal by next December,” said Mujtaba Rahman of the Eurasia Group in a briefing note. “The disadvantage is that Johnson’s current Euroskeptic allies would oppose E.U. demands such as a level playing field on regulation.’’

But what British ministers describe privately as “the crucial divergence question” has barely been discussed in the cabinet, Mr. Rahman said, while noting that Mr. Johnson was likely to reshuffle his cabinet before too long.

Leo Varadkar, the prime minister of Ireland, has managed his key goal: preventing the restoration of a hard border on the island with Northern Ireland. But he also wants to preserve close ties in a future relationship, he said on Friday — “a trade deal or trade deal plus” — to “ensure that we still have a tariff-free trade between Britain and the E.U. and a set of minimum standards.”

That way, Mr. Varadkar said, “nobody feels that there is unfair competition, especially when it comes to labor rights or environmental protection.”

On climate, the leaders said they had agreed on a goal of a carbon-neutral European Union by 2050, but in fact Poland secured a temporary exemption Friday morning, citing its coal-dependent economy and a lack of transitional funding, which ties into another complicated debate about the bloc’s next seven-year budget.

President Emmanuel Macron of France expressed confidence that the Poles would go along eventually, and said the exemption “doesn’t slow down the implementation of the green deal.” Hungary and the Czech Republic also went along when they were assured that nuclear power would be recognized as an element of their domestic energy supply in order to get to carbon neutral.

The Polish prime minister, Mateusz Morawiecki, whose country relies on highly polluting coal for some 80 percent of its energy needs, said the negotiations had been “very difficult,” adding, “Poland will be reaching climate neutrality at its own pace.”

Prime Minister Viktor Orban of Hungary insisted that the less-affluent countries of Central Europe must get generous financial guarantees. “We cannot allow Brussels bureaucrats to have poor people and poor countries to pay the costs of the fight against climate change,” he said.