Britain, EU in historic deal to open Brexit trade talks

[shenmue]

https://www.afp.com/en/news/205/britain-eu-historic-deal-open-brexit-trade-talks-doc-uz0048

[Ghost Dog]

1. Here's the official text. Note weasel-words in small print:

https://ec.europa.eu/commission/sites/beta-political/files/joint_report.pdf


https://ec.europa.eu/commission/sites/beta-political/files/joint_report.pdf

[muriel_volestrangler]

2. Any particular weasel words you're thinking of?

The whole thing's fairly long.

My summary of it is "although the UK won't be in the EU customs union, the border with the Republic of Ireland cannot be a hard one, and there can be no differences in the treatment of Northern Ireland and the rest of the UK, so the UK must align itself sufficiently with the EU to mean a hard border is not needed."

Which seems to thread the needle as needed at the moment. The dreams of the hard-Brexit libertarians look smashed, but "acting as if in the customs union without actually being in it" may give the Tories a chance of a few limits on movement of people for work that they can point to and say "see, this is the control that Leave voters wanted".

[LeftishBrit]

3. I don't really understand it (does anyone?)

but I get the impression that it's something like: 'Let's basically be in the Single Market, but without calling it the Single Market, so that we'll sort-of be like Norway or Switzerland, except that it will be more expensive, chaotic and bureaucratic, as we'll have to sign new forms for every separate occasion'.

And we may have Billion-Pound Arlene and the Irish government to thank for the possibility that we may only be imposing moderate economic sanctions on ourselves rather than committing total economic suicide. But let's see what happens next in this bizarre saga!