Brexit heading for crisis weekend as French spat sours talks

Negotiations between Britain and the European Union over a post-Brexit trade deal are heading for a crisis weekend, with the outcome looking increasingly uncertain.

Prime Minister Boris Johnson is likely to talk with European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen on Saturday to review the obstacles in the negotiations, an EU official said. The bloc’s chief negotiator, Michel Barnier, is expected to return to Brussels the same day before briefing ambassadors from the bloc’s 27 member states on Sunday, the official said.

Officials from both sides are racing to salvage an accord after a fight between Britain and France scuppered an agreement that had been coming into sight earlier in the week.

U.K. officials said the EU suddenly turned up with a new set of demands on Thursday, something their Brussels counterparts denied. The talks are now set to take a turn for the worse before any deal can be reached, according to one EU official.

The U.K. blamed France for hardening the EU’s demands. On Friday, the country’s European affairs minister, Clement Beaune, reiterated his government will veto any deal if it isn’t in its national interest.

“We are at a very difficult point in the talks,” Shaun Jepson, a spokesman for U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson, told reporters. “Time is in very short supply.”

EU negotiators suspect the U.K. is seeking a moment of crisis and they are bracing for the talks to enter a tricky period over the weekend, according to an official from the bloc who spoke on condition of anonymity because the discussions are private.

The two sides hadn’t been far away from a deal, but the U.K. is slowing the process down, the official said. Earlier, a British official had said that, despite the setback, an accord was still possible in coming days.

If a deal isn’t reached, businesses and consumers will be left facing the cost and disruption of tariffs and quotas, while relations between the U.K. and EU risk being poisoned for a generation.

Michel Barnier, the EU’s chief negotiator, has stayed on in London to continue discussions after canceling plans to update envoys from the bloc on Friday. He won’t go beyond his mandate in the pursuit of a deal, the EU official stressed.

The two sides haven’t yet reached agreement on three key issues: access to British fishing waters, the competitive level playing field for business, and how any overall agreement is enforced.

French President Emmanuel Macron is determined his fishing industry won’t lose a big part of its access to British waters and wants U.K. businesses to be tied to strict rules on state aid and labor standards so they don’t have what he sees as an unfair advantage.

“If there is a deal which is not good,” Beaune told Europe 1 radio, “then we would oppose it. We always said so.”

German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who has taken a softer line than her French counterpart, called for both the U.K. and EU to make concessions.

“For the chancellor, and that hasn’t changed in recent weeks, the willingness to compromise is needed on both sides,” government spokesman Steffen Seibert said. “There are red lines, that’s clear, but there is always room for compromise.”