Brexit talks hit Groundhog Week

The EU’s chief Brexit negotiator Michel Barnier said he was concerned that ‘time passes quickly.’

Haven’t been paying close attention to the high-stakes Brexit negotiations? Don’t worry, you haven’t missed anything yet.

The United Kingdom’s negotiating team arrived in Brussels Monday for the third formal round of talks aimed at charting an orderly path out of the European Union. But although the Brits got to show they were in the European capital working on an uncharacteristically sunny public holiday, no actual negotiating took place.

After the EU’s chief negotiator, Michel Barnier, and his British counterpart, David Davis, made brief statements — but took no questions — at the European Commission headquarters Monday afternoon, an underwhelmed television reporter (with a British accent) shouted at them: “It sounds like Groundhog Day, gentlemen.”

Davis and Barnier walked away without offering a reply. But it’s hard to imagine they disagreed.

Barnier, as he did in nearly identical circumstances in June and July, welcomed Davis to Brussels and professed to be glad to see him. “Welcome back, David, I am looking forward to working with you this week,” Barnier said, then quickly added: “To be honest, I am concerned. Time passes quickly.”

Barnier said he welcomed the recent position papers published by the U.K. on a range of issues and said he and his team had read them “very carefully.” But he suggested there had been no game-changer. “We must start negotiating seriously,” Barnier said.

He also offered a pointed reminder that the European Council had given him very specific orders: to resolve the most important divorce issues first, before moving on to a discussion of Britain’s future relationship with the EU. The U.K. has insisted that the withdrawal terms and the future relationship are inseparable and should be discussed in tandem.

“The EU27 and the European Parliament stand united,” Barnier said. “They will not accept that separation issues are not addressed properly. I am ready. I am ready to intensify negotiations over the coming weeks in order to advance.”

In a further sign of the snail’s pace of negotiations, officials said that the “working groups” tasked with addressing various technical issues in the negotiations had not met on Monday, meaning the previously agreed-upon four-day cycle of talks has been reduced this month to three days. (And even though the British negotiators are now in town, the talking won’t get underway until 11.30 am on Tuesday, officials said).

Under the EU treaties, there is a two-year deadline to reach a withdrawal agreement or the U.K. is effectively ejected from the EU without any safety net for the array of policy problems created by ending its four-decade membership of the bloc — the so-called “cliff edge” scenario.

That deadline can be extended, or a transitional arrangement adopted, only by unanimous agreement of the U.K. and the 27 remaining EU countries — something Barnier has said will be considered only once the withdrawal terms are agreed. But wide gulfs remain on many of the core withdrawal questions, particularly over how to calculate the so-called Brexit bill and how to guarantee the rights of EU citizens living in the U.K. (and vice versa) after Brexit.

Davis, for his part, said on Monday that he was “pleased to be back in Brussels” and insisted that “we have had a busy few weeks since the last round of talks.” He then quickly clarified that the “we” meant the U.K. on its own, not the U.K. and the EU.

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“The U.K. government has published a large number of papers covering important issues related to our withdrawal and our vision for a deep and special partnership that we want with the European Union in the future,” he said. “They are the products of hard work and detailed thinking that has been going on behind the scenes not just in the last few weeks, but for the last 12 months.”

“For the United Kingdom the week ahead is about driving forward the technical discussions across all the issues, all the issues,” Davis said, making a now familiar pitch for putting divorce terms and the future relationship on the table at the same time.

“We are ready to roll up our sleeves and get down to work again once more … let’s do it,” he said.

Just not on Monday, or Friday, or too early in the morning.