Brexit Talks to Continue As Johnson, EU Agree to 'Go Extra Mile'

In a joint statement on Sunday, the UK prime minister and European commission president said the two sides had a responsibility to keep on working, with sources claiming progress was being made.

“We had a useful phone call this morning. We discussed the major unresolved topics,”, they said, The Guardian reported.

“Our negotiating teams have been working day and night over recent days. And despite the exhaustion after almost a year of negotiations, despite the fact that deadlines have been missed over and over we think it is responsible at this point to go the extra mile.

“We have accordingly mandated our negotiators to continue the talks and to see whether an agreement can even at this late stage be reached.”

The crunch call, described as “constructive” by Von der Leyen, appears to put the troubled talks on a new trajectory, days after the prime minister had said it was “very, very likely” the UK would exit the transition period without an agreement.

Sources said the two sides had found fresh agreement over clauses in a potential deal designed to ensure neither side could undercut the other as they set their own regulatory standards.

The negotiations between the teams led by the UK’s chief negotiator, David Frost, and his EU counterpart, Michel Barnier, had run until midnight on Saturday and resumed on Sunday at 9am in Brussels.

There were early signs on Sunday morning that negotiators had moved together on the issues of fair competition and EU access to British fishing waters but Downing Street insisted that all was “hinging” on the phone call at noon Brussels time.

Speaking after talking with the British team in Brussels, Raab said that for all the creativity of the negotiators in the Belgian capital, the negotiation would live or die depending on the outcome of the leaders’ conversation.

“I called in to check in with our team in Brussels, they’ve worked incredibly hard. You remember, the prime minister made it made clear we want to leave no stone unturned,” Raab told Sky’s Sophie Ridge on Sunday.

“So we’ve been at it very hard at work at a technical everything with all the usual jostling of positions, but what really matters is what the EU is willing at a political level to commit too.”

Von der Leyen and Johnson had agreed during a three-hour dinner on Wednesday evening that a “firm decision” would need to be made by the end of the weekend on whether there was any hope of a deal.

But both sides had also said they would be willing to talk for a few more days if a final breakthrough could be achieved.

During his TV appearances Raab had set out how the UK government saw the pathway for a successful outcome.

He said: “We want to be treated like any other independent self-respecting democracy. If you can accept that at a political level, then there’s every reason to be confident, but there is still I think a long way to go …

“The technical tools matter, getting creative solutions, understand the job positions really matters, but what ultimately is required, this 11th hour of negotiation is moving the political logjam, that can only happen at the level of the prime minister and commissioner Von der Leyen.”

The biggest stumbling block to a deal has been the EU’s demand for an “evolution” or “ratchet” clause in the treaty that would create a mechanism to ensure that a minimum base-line of environmental, social and labor standards evolves over time, to ensure there is no significant distortion of trade.

Downing Street has claimed the EU’s proposals would tie the UK to follow regulatory changes in Brussels on pain of automatic tariffs. Arbitration over those tariffs would only then follow.

On Friday, the Dutch prime minister, Mark Rutte, said this was not the latest proposal but that for zero tariff access to the European market, the EU needed some reassurances that if one side deviated significantly on standards on some products that there would be a structured conversation about addressing distortions to trade.

Rabb said: “Mark Rutte is on voice, he is normally pretty pragmatic, we are normally quite close to the Dutch on these matters …

“There are plenty of other voices. The bottom line is this: are we required to follow EU rules past present future and do we have a situation where when we are exercising normal control over our own law as any democracy does that we suddenly find there is a torpedo of tariffs.”

It is understood the EU has now agreed that tariffs should only be applied once there is clear evidence that regulatory changes by one side has significantly distorted trade.

Ireland’s Taoiseach Micheal Martin said the recent agreement on implementing the Northern Ireland protocol last week showed that the two sides could reach accommodation on difficult issues.

“I think it would be an appalling failure of statecraft if we were not in a position to get a deal over the line,” he said. “It is vital that we do not have an acrimonious break-up because that would be very damaging.”

Martin said he believed accommodation could be reached on the level playing field differences. “A resolution mechanism to resolve any future disputes is one that both sides, with a bit of creativity, can sign up to,” he said. “Ninety-seven percent of this deal has been negotiated. The remaining 3% should not be beyond the capacity of both sides to bridge.”

Shadow business secretary Ed Miliband had said a no-deal Brexit would be “a disastrous outcome for the country” and said that it made no sense to accept tariffs across the board because of some theoretical future threat linked to standards.

“That is like saying I’m worried that my roof is going to leak in five years’ time, so let’s bulldoze the house now,” he said. Asked if Labor would vote for a deal if it were achieved, Miliband said his party had said “we’re minded to support it.”