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LAST UPDATE | 17 Dec 2020
EUROPEAN COMMISSION PRESIDENT Ursula von der Leyen has said that “substantial progress” has been made on many issues in post-Brexit trade deal negotiations – but “big differences remain” and “bridging them will be very challenging”.
A spokesperson for UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson said that negotiations were “now in a serious situation”.
He said that an agreement wouldn’t be reached unless the EU position “changed substantially” – with this understood to be referring to fisheries issues.
“[Johnson] said that we were making every effort to accommodate reasonable EU requests on the level-playing field, but even though the gap had narrowed some fundamental areas remained difficult.”
The spokesperson said that the EU position on fisheries was “simply not reasonable”, and it needed to “shift significantly” if there is to be a deal.
These statement was given after the two leaders spoke by phone at 7pm Irish time about the ongoing trade talks ahead of the legal deadline of 31 December for the UK to leave the Single Market and Customs Union.
Earlier, the European Parliament said it will not ratify any post-Brexit trade deal by the end of the year if they cannot access its text by Sunday.
The declaration from the Conference of Presidents, initiated by Spanish member Iratxe Garcia Perez, states they are ready to hold an extraordinary session at the end of December if an agreement is reached by midnight on Sunday 21 December.
It also calls for a provisional text of the Brexit agreement to be made available to European Parliament members as soon as possible.
The declaration acknowledges the “exceptional nature” of the proceedings and commends the “dedicated and professional work” of Brexit negotiators in the UK and EU.
It also welcomes efforts to avoid a no-deal scenario and “the huge negative impact it would have on citizens and businesses”.
Tánaiste Leo Varadkar was asked on RTÉ’s Prime Time tonight whether there was ‘grandstanding’ by the British side over the state of negotiations.
He said that “there’s always a little bit of brinkmanship, there’s always a certain degree of political theatre” in trade talks.
That doesn’t mean this deal is guaranteed, but I do think both sides are edging towards a deal, and I think that both sides are going to want to have that done before Christmas.
‘The last stumbling blocks’
On my initiative, today @Europarl_EN group leaders adopted this declaration stating that we will not be rushed into a consent vote of the #Brexit deal before the end of the year if we don’t have access to the text by Sunday. pic.twitter.com/8yxE3TpATH
— Iratxe Garcia Perez/♥️ (@IratxeGarper) December 17, 2020
The European Union’s lead negotiator Michel Barnier said today that good progress had been made in talks, but the “last stumbling blocks remain”.
Barnier has been holding talks with the UK team led by David Frost in an effort to reach a late deal before the current arrangements expire at the end of the year.
He briefed European Parliament leaders this morning about the state of the talks, which he said were in the “final stretch”.
The talks were given the green light to continue on Sunday following a meeting between Johnson and von der Leyen.
But time is running short for a deal to be reached by negotiators, backed by national leaders and then approved by MPs and MEPs.
Meanwhile, in the UK…
MPs have been put on standby to be recalled if a trade deal is secured as they prepare to finish up for Christmas.
UK minister for the cabinet office Michael Gove told MPs: “Intensive talks are ongoing with both negotiating teams working day and night to reach a deal.
“We’re going the extra mile in continuing the negotiations to see whether or not an agreement can be reached and we will continue to keep Parliament informed on our progress.”
He added: “Even if sometimes results are coming later than we might have wanted, I know we will be doing everything in order to secure a good free trade agreement in the interests of the whole United Kingdom.”
Gove said if there is a deal “we will request that the House returns in order to make sure that we can legislate effectively, and we believe we can pass the necessary legislation before 31 December to give businesses legal certainty for the future”.
- With reporting from PA
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Who makes this kinda stuff up? I really don’t understand the mentality of the type of people who would go out of their way to play on people’s fears with a view to stealing from them (information, bank details, whatever).
@lambda sensor: I agree, but if it is a text message it should have a source number so the telephone operators should be able to pass on the information to the gardai. I assume it is an offence to impersonate a government or state (or any) organisation.
Jail without access to the internet for the duration to these scam individuals. If coming from abroad then block the foriegn operators numbers from all texts and calls to Ireland
The telecom operators can be very quick to protect themselves but are lacking in protecting it’s customs. Bet they could stop all texts with the link in it and other scams but for some reason they seem slow to act. Yet social media platforms can stop the spread and remove stuff if needed.
@Niall Ó Cofaigh: There are many SIM card providers out there now so it would be very difficult to track things back to the source. With GSM cards being so cheap and easy to use plus the availability of GSM application SIM cards it is a very simple thing to setup a PC controlled system which will spit out messages all day. Those messages are not even sent from a standard off the shelf phone.
@David Corrigan:
If it is a foreign network, block the whole network and tell them to figure it out…
@David Corrigan: I have no doubt that they are almost certainly run from a device and not single composed messages in most cases and might be hard to trace back – ISP logs could help. But even if the guys could not be stopped the mobile operators could stop messages based upon content unless they have now encrypted plain text messages. We can then go to the ISP to block access to that link. Or do what they did in the USA, do a DNS redirected.
When telecom sites were replicated and phishing sites created to mimic them these sites were blocked or unhosted within 30 minutes – so it is possible to block access and prevent too much harm being done.
@Niall Ó Cofaigh: it can be configured in a way that you only see the name of the sender (the name they give themselves) like when you get a text message from your bank with a one time password to login. The sender in turn can be located abroad.
@Niall Ó Cofaigh: the whole world is seeing cyber theft and scams it is not unique to telcos that you allege ( wrongly ) that are sitting back and not taking action – there is an enormous amount of money and effort and resources spent by operators to try shut down scams – unfortunately once the the internet has been opened to all the smartfones then these challenges get more and more difficult – it is not as straight forward as blocking a call ( I work in this field )
Surely the network operators can block this fake information from circulating .
@Eug J Cummins: Would be next to impossible to do this.
@David Corrigan: block mass commercial texts that use the term HSE that are not from an authorised sender
@Eug J Cummins: They can (and used to many years ago) but wont now.
It would actually be straightforward, but would block advertising companies. These are sent by international SMS relays, and it would take 5 seconds to turn on a block if no number or name present.
Ah any close contact of a positive case would know this is fake . 24 days not one call from HSE. Luckily I contacted my contacts myself . Everybody in same circumstances should do it . If you know you’ve been exposed , contact the people you were with and tell them to quarantine and call their GP. Same if you’re a positive case . Otherwise it’s “ waiting for Godot”.
Those f@#£ers should be shot with balls of there own s#%T
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