A claim that Boris Johnson decided to breach international law after the EU had threatened to disrupt food exports from Britain to Northern Ireland has been condemned as “fake news”, amid growing outrage over the prime minister’s plans to renege on the withdrawal agreement.
Nathalie Loiseau, a former French minister for EU affairs, who sits on a committee of MEPs coordinating the European parliament’s position on trade talks with the UK, said she feared Brexiters were looking for a reason to blow up the current talks.
“Do you want us to lose patience and slam the door and leave?” she asked.
The MEP raised her concerns following a report in the Sun newspaper claiming Michel Barnier, the EU’s chief negotiator, had made a “veiled threat” to use the withdrawal agreement struck last year to block exports from Britain to Northern Ireland if a wider agreement on trade between the bloc and the UK was not reached.
Northern Ireland will effectively remain within the EU’s single market at the end of the year under a protocol in the withdrawal agreement included as part of attempts to avoid a hard border on the island of Ireland.
Unless there is EU approval of the UK government’s new so-called sanitary and phytosanitary (SPS) regime for agricultural products, trade flow with the rest of the UK could be hit.
It was claimed Barnier had sought to leverage the European commission’s power to withhold approval of the UK’s regime during the trade and security talks, and that this had prompted the prime minister to look for ways to undermine the withdrawal agreement through the internal market bill due to be published on Wednesday.
EU sources denied any such threat had been made and noted that the proposed internal market bill, through which the Northern Ireland secretary, Brandon Lewis, has admitted the government is looking to break international law in a “limited way”, would not solve the problem to which it was said to be the solution.
The internal market bill’s most contentious clauses relate to reducing the EU’s ability to control state aid and to apply tariffs on goods going from Great Britain to Northern Ireland regarded as being at risk of entering the Republic of Ireland.
Officials instead said the UK government’s failure to provide details of its new SPS regime was the reason for a lack of of so-called “third country” approval, describing the UK approach as a “complete mess”.
Speaking on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme, Loiseau said the suggestion of threats coming from Barnier was a fresh example of “disinformation and fake news related to Brexit”.
She said: “I do regret that since 2016 and even now, you have all these fake news going around creating confusion. As if some people among the Brexiteers are only looking for alibis to rush to a new deal.
“I would definitely need a clarification, whether the British negotiator does want a deal, or whether he wants to no-deal.
“I’m not in Boris Johnson’s head, but what’s taking place right now is fake news. You’ll remember a few days ago, this rumour that the 27 [EU member states] would withdraw their confidence in Michel Barnier, which was completely invented.
“Then you have the British prime minister saying that a no-deal could be a good solution for the UK. Everybody knows it’s not real. It’s a man-made catastrophe.”
In EU capitals and Brussels there is strong suspicion the UK government is seeking to present itself as willing to head for a no-deal outcome in order to achieve its main negotiating goals in the trade and security talks.
France’s trade minister, Franck Riester, told the Financial Times a free trade deal was still possible. “There’s a game of bluff going on,” he said. “We’ll try to stay calm and serene but firmly behind the line of the EU27.”
source https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2020/sep/09/brexit-claim-boris-johnson-responding-to-barnier-threat-called-fake-news-
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