As UK and European negotiators are meeting today for another round of Brexit trade talks, all stakeholders hope the two sides will reach a deal by October 31. That would be a realistic deadline for it to be ratified by the end of the year, when Britain's withdrawal from the European single market comes into effect. For companies that do cross-Channel business, the looming deadline and current lack of clarity is leaving them in the dark.
As reported on euronews.com¸ the Brexit transition ends in just a few months. For importers and exporters in the European Union and the UK, the outbreak of COVID-19 has derailed negotiations and thrown a spanner in the works.
Theneweuropean.co.uk has stated that an EU official has urged Boris Johnson to take the ‘unique and highly attractive’ offer it has made to the UK which it says has never been offered to any country before.
David McAllister, the chair of the European Parliament’s UK Coordination Group, told German newspaper Börsen-Zeitung the EU had made “a unique and highly attractive offer to the UK that has never been made to a third country: quota-free and duty-free access for goods to the single market”.
But he said in the interest of “fair competition” that the UK must accept the level playing field to progress in negotiations.