BC EU
Saved by @Jacobtldr

After Michel Barnier's briefing of EU ambassadors this afternoon, here's where things stand:

 2/ There is a basic deadline of Christmas Eve to get a deal. That will give the EU's legal services time to draw up a letter to send to the UK seeking provisional application of the treaty from Jan 1
3/ It's understood officials will need four days at a minimum to draft a letter seeking provisional application of the treaty (all this is on the basis that it is pretty much too late for the European Parliament to ratify the treaty on time for Jan 1)
4/ On the prospects for a deal: diplomats say they're not ruling out a deal by Christmas eve. Michel Barnier said there had been significant progress. Member states expect to convene a meeting of the Working Party (of Brexit coordinators) every day (except Christmas Day)
5/ Acc to one diplomat Barnier will publish the text once/if it's agreed, but before it's been legally scrubbed. Member states can approve the text via written procedure (sending a formal letter) as there are no Council meetings foreseen to do it in person between now and Dec 31
6/ There are still some issues around the level playing field and governance, areas the UK wants to change, or wants sunset clauses on. For example, London wants to limit the extent to which energy can be subject to the level playing field constraints
7/ Despite the cautious optimism that a deal can be done, fisheries remains a major problem. Member states say the UK offer of the EU handing over 35pc of the value of its catches does not count pelagic spieces and that's a serious problem
8/ The UK is proposing to hive off pelagics to the informal independent coastal state forum including Norway, Iceland, the Faroes etc. Problem for EU is boats would lose a stable outlook on access for pelagics + wd have to negotiate access annually
9/ Barnier told ambassadors the UK was still looking for a three year transition while the EU would accept 6 years, although some MS felt even that was not long enough
10/ The general feeling is that the UK offer does not give EU fishing communities stability and predictability - and it excludes the 6-12m zone. Also, acc to sources, the UK offer makes burden sharing difficult, eg Ireland + Denmark wd suffer disproportionately on pelagic stocks.
11/ Overall, member states believe fisheries is so sensitive and even non-coastal member states have not noticeably broken ranks on the issue (in Belgium, for example, fishing is a Flemish pursuit + the central govt can't afford to alienate Flemish nationalists on the issue)
12/ Barnier said the image of Brexit in Europe on Jan 1 would be angry protesting fishermen. How wd you explain to people we're going to give the UK interconnection rights in the North Sea to the EU grid + at the same time our boats aren't allowed to catch fish in UK waters?
13/ Other outstanding areas still not resolved: rules of origin for electric batteries; UK participation in Erasmus; and an EU demand for a non-discrimination clause...
14/ This wd mean that the UK cannot discriminate against any member state. It's been incorporated into social security cooperation, but not into the sphere of short term visas. This is a non-neogiable element for the EU, I'm told
15/ In particular there is a concern that, say, Romanian citizens would be given worse treatment compared to other member states when it came to short term visas.
16/ Council legal services told ambassadors that lawyer-linguists had been working "day and night" to try to get the draft text legally scrubbed and that even if the deal was done tonight MS would not get a watertight, legally scrubbed English text on time
17/ Officials refer to a non-legally scrubbed text as a "dirty" text (says here). The treaty wd need a special provision saying the 23 "authentic" legally-sound translated texts wd all be available in March / April and wd replace the "dirty" English text signed in the coming days
18/ Member states are getting increasingly frustrated that they cannot see a draft text yet. There will be a meeting of the Working Party tomorrow where member states will get a detailed outline of what's in the treaty (but no text) in a mtg which could last four hours
19/ And, wait for it, one official raised the possibility that the text is now 2,000 pages long, including annexes

More from Tony Connelly

Tony Connelly
Tony Connelly
@tconnellyRTE
NEW: European Commission president @vonderleyen: As things stand I cannot tell you whether there will be a deal or not, but I can tell you there is a path to an agreement now. The path may be very narrow but it is there.

2/ VDL - it is therefore our responsibility to continue trying.

3/ Commission president says the "good news" is we have found a way forward on most issues, but this is now a case of being "so close and yet being so far away from each other."

4/ VDL - level playing field: our aim is simply fair competition on our own market.

Says the "architecture" of a level playing field provision rests on two pillars: state aid and standards

5/ On state aid we have made progress based on common princples, guarantees of domestic enforcement, the possibility to autonomously remedy the situation where needed [ie, either side can take action if distortions of trade etc]
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Tony Connelly
Tony Connelly
@tconnellyRTE
Where are we at as of 1450 CET?

Talks continuing, could go on for a while longer. One informed source is suggesting that because the fish deal was agreed at the high political level (btn @vonderleyen and @BorisJohnson) it was left to officials to translate it into real numbers

2/ Some reflections from an EU diplomat briefed on the rest of the deal, which appears to be in place:

3/ "There is nothing particularly surprising. It is consistent with what we've been hearing all along. The UK red lines are respected. Our concerns are also respected. Of course we have to see the fine print, but in general there is a robust level playing field."

4/ The LPF mechanism is said to be a "complicated structure" which works both ways.

5/ "It doesn't mean that because you have these structures you necessarily have to use them. The mood at the moment is, do you want to diverge [from EU standards] for the sake of diverging? In reality, most likely, pragmatism will prevail."
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Tony Connelly
Tony Connelly
@tconnellyRTE
Irish foreign min Simon Coveney says he is "more optimistic" about progress in the EU UK Joint Committee over implementing the Northern Ireland Protocol.

2/ Last night @rtenews reported that if a free trade deal were to be concluded, a sequence would be put in place at the end of which the UK would drop the clauses in the Internal Market Bill which breach the Protocol.

3/ This morning, the EU’s representative on the Joint Committee, which implements the Protocol, said he would be meeting his counterpart Michael Gove in Brussels today.


4/ Mr Coveney said: “There is more cause to be optimistic and positive in the context of the Joint Committee and its work in terms of implementing the Withdrawal Agreement and the Protocol on Ireland and Northern Ireland.

5/ “Maros Sefcovic and Michael Gove have made really practical progress on many of the outstanding issues that were not resolved up until a few weeks ago.
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Tony Connelly
Tony Connelly
@tconnellyRTE
NEW: Michel Barnier has told EU member states there has been some movement on the level playing field, and on dispute resolution, but that fisheries talks remain "very difficult" @rtenews understands. Sources say this could go through this week and beyond...

2/ Acc to one senior source, Barnier said there was acceptance that the EU could take retaliatory measures against the UK if it diverged from EU standards but that it would not be "autonomous", in other words, before taking action there wd need to be some dialogue with the UK

3/ "It's the operationalisation of that principle that is now under discussion," acc to source. The EU see this is progress as for a long time the UK refused to accept that if they diverged the EU had a right to do something, says the source

4/ "That principle has now been accepted, but how it is implemented is the nub of the dicussion."

5/ From the EU perspective the concern is the UK might change its rules to make it more competitive, says the source. "Barnier seemed positive that the principle of couter-measures had been agreed."
EU & UK
Tony Connelly
Tony Connelly
@tconnellyRTE
Some compelling evidence at the NI Affairs Committee this morning on Brexit, the risks of smuggling, organised crime, the "soft underbelly" of the Irish border, the loss of the European Arrest Warrant and what might replace it

2/ Giving evidence were Simon Byrne, chief constable of the PSNI, Mark McEwan, assistant chief constable, Steve Rodhouse, of the UK National Crime Agency, and Steve Tracey, of HMRC. Here's the gist of what I've just filed for @rtenews online:

3/ A UK law officer has raised the prospect of intl organised criminals trafficking drugs, people + firearms into the UK via Ireland because of tighter controls at GB ports thanks to Brexit. He also suggested that Ireland may have to tighten security at its ports accordingly.

4/ Steve Rodhouse, DG of Operations with the UK National Crime Agency, said organised criminals would be making a “fundamental choice” as to whether they continue to traffic drugs, people and firearms into the UK via English ports...

5/ ...or whether they might decide to switch routes into the UK through Northern Ireland via the Irish Republic.
Mr Rodhouse told a House of Commons committee that such trafficking was already underway through what could be termed the “soft underbelly” of the Irish border.
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First things first, you’ll need a passport with at least 6 months left on it. And you’ll need full travel/third party/health insurance, since if you get ill or have an accident every penny of your care will have to be paid for 2/

To work or do a gig you’re going to need a work visa, just like you do for the USA. But here’s the thing. Work permits & visas and the conditions attached are a matter not for the EU but for the member states themselves 3/

Yes, every member state controls who comes in and who doesn’t and what the rules will be for work and residency. It’s almost as if the Brexiters have been lying about this ALL ALONG. EU members CONTROL THEIR OWN BORDERS 4/

So you’ll need to get a work permit for every country you’re intending to work or gig in and the rules are often different, as are the rules on eg taxation of that work (eg Spain has a withholding tax, France does not) 5/
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Anti-Bullshit Alien
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@LennieMerrick1
“Fanatical Remainers and the FBPE cult”: a thread

The populist right seems to be intensifying its efforts to portray supporters of EU membership as some sort of lunatic fringe. (Never-knowingly-impartial @afneil and billionaires’ stooge @darrengrimes_ are among (1/20-ish)

the worst offenders.) “Fanatical Remainers,” they sneer at every opportunity. “FBPE cultists! Extremists! Ideologues!”

So what is a cult? What are the hallmarks of extremism? The Oxford Dictionary defines a cult as “a system of religious veneration and devotion /2

directed towards a particular figure or object”; “a relatively small group of people having religious beliefs or practices regarded by others as strange or as imposing excessive control over members”; or, in its weakest sense, “a misplaced or excessive admiration /3

for a particular thing”.

According to Janja Lalich PhD, a sociologist who specialises in cults and extremist groups, a cult is “a group or movement held together by a shared commitment to a charismatic leader or ideology. It has a belief system /4

that has the answers to all of life’s questions and offers a special solution to be gained only by following the leader’s rules”.

“Cults tend to be founded by charismatic leaders … great manipulators. They know how to read people. They come along and offer a message /5
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Peter
Peter
@deGourlay
Thread: The EU and AstraZeneca have agreed to publish the APA contract. Whilst the EU pushed for this they appear to have shot themselves in the foot.

Clause 5.1 "AstraZeneca shall use its Best Reasonable Efforts to manufacture the Initial Doses within the EU for distribution...."

There are two features of this clause:

The first is It only requires Reasonable Best Efforts to manufacture. There is no guarantee of production.

The second is it only provides for access to vaccine manufactured within the EU. @vonderleyen's demand that @AstraZeneca should divert 75 million doses from the UK has no contractual basis.

The delivery schedule is literally named the "Estimated Delivery Schedule. There is no guarantee offered that it can be met. In fact it states it is for "earliest possible" delivery.


The @vonderleyen threats to sue @AstraZeneca are nothing more than bluster aimed at diverting attention away from the three month delay she and Merkel caused.
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Robert Peston
Robert Peston
@Peston
The important difference between AstraZeneca's relationship with the UK and with the EU, and the reason it has fallen behind schedule on 50m vaccine doses promised to the EU, is that the UK agreed the deal with AZ a full three months before the EU did - which gave...

AZ an extra three months to sort out manufacturing and supply problems relating to the UK contract (there were plenty of problems). Here is the important timeline. In May AZ reached agreement with Oxford and the UK government to make and supply the vaccine. In fact Oxford...

had already started work on the supply chain. The following month AZ reached a preliminary agreement with Germany, the Netherlands, France and Italy, a group known as the Inclusive Vaccine Alliance, based on the agreement with the UK. The announcement was 13 June. BUT the EU...

insisted that the Inclusive Vaccine Alliance could not formalise the deal. The European Commission insisted it should take over the contract negotiations on behalf of the whole EU. So were another two months of talks and the contract was not signed till the end of August...

What is frustrating for AZ is that the extra talks with the European Commission led to no material changes to the contract, but wasted time on making arrangements to make the vaccine with partner sites. The yield at these partner sites has been lower than expected. The problem...
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Mangy Jay
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@magi_jay
The two most irritating sentences I find myself typing over and over on this website are:
1. "There are many pathways to universal healthcare"
&
2. "No, the Democratic party would not be a center right party in European countries either in social or economic terms"

& if you're going to come at me from the economic angle, plz do some research into EU center right parties. There's a lot of btwn-country variation, but these parties typically aim towards increased privatization of public systems & deregulation of industry. Dems do the opposite.

A related area is austerity. To look at recent history, examine how many EU countries chipped away at funding their extant safety nets, esp in healthcare, during the recession. What did the US do under Dems? A massive expansion of healthcare.

Now, the ACA is far from perfect and I want a much greater public role as well as the eventual minimization/near-elimination of private insurance in the system. That said, it's simply true that the U.S. expanded our healthcare system when many EU countries were cutting theirs.

You can't just compare a party in absolute economic terms across countries. This is especially the case when you have massive generational differences in building of the social safety net/welfare state.
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