Does ‘no progress’ in EU trade talks mean hopes of a post-Brexit deal are fading?

There is still time to come to an agreement – but whether that deal can be done is another question entirely, writes John Rentoul

The only question is whether both sides have a sufficient common interest in reaching a deal to make it work (Rex Features)

Still no progress in the EU-UK trade talks, as on Friday the two sides merely published a timetable for more talks next week. “Intensified discussions with the EU are ongoing,” said the British side. “These continue to be constructive and useful, although significant differences still remain between us on a number of important issues.”

There is still time to do a deal by the end of the year, although it would be a “bare bones” agreement, leaving many of the thorny problems to be sorted out later. That is possible because, uniquely, this is a trade deal to allow the two sides to diverge rather than to converge.

The only question is whether both sides have a sufficient common interest in reaching a deal to make it work. Neither side wants a no-deal outcome, which would require them to impose tariffs on each other under World Trade Organisation rules, but equally neither side wants to be seen to concede too much.

“The only talks that matter consist of the private conversation going on between the left and right sides of Boris Johnson’s head,” says Denis MacShane, Labour former Europe minister. Which is half true, although there is another internal conversation going on, among EU leaders, who by coincidence are meeting in person and in Brussels this weekend.

So far there has been little progress in the talks, which still seem some time away from even starting to draw up a legal text. Since David Frost, Boris Johnson’s chief negotiator, urged an “intensification” of the discussions at the beginning of June, the two sides have been meeting face to face, but their public statements have repeatedly said that significant differences remain.

At the end of June the timetable was complicated by Johnson’s announcement that Frost would become his national security adviser in September. Frost put out a statement saying: “I will of course remain chief negotiator for the EU talks and these will remain my top single priority until those negotiations have concluded, one way or another.”

But there is no guarantee that those talks will be completed in September, despite Michel Barnier, the EU negotiator, setting October as the deadline for agreement. Everyone knows that this is not a real deadline, because the only genuine constraint is that the European Parliament must approve the deal in full session, which suggests the traditional EU 11th hour for agreement would fall in December.

Nor is it clear what scope the two sides have to compromise on the two most difficult issues: the “level playing field” and fish. The LPF, as the jargon has it for the first of those, is a huge and complex problem that amounts to how the two sides will define unfair competition and how they will enforce rules against it. As such, it includes questions such as state aid, but goes wider to include the concept of “social dumping”, which is how the EU describes attempts to undercut labour costs by eroding minimum terms and conditions.

The continuing discussions suggest that the two sides are still sounding each other out, but they may not actually start to exchange drafts of legal texts until very late in the day.