This is from Joe Barnes, the Telegraph’s Brussels correspondent, on the deal. Brexit reset deal - Fishing access until 2038 SPS, no time limits on dynamic alignment CBAM and ETS is dynamic alignment No youth mobility deal, but a promise to revisit at a later under agreed parameters, including rejoining Erasmus. CBAM is the carbon border adjustment mechanism and the ETS is the emissions trading scheme. Q: Will the UK be able to influence EU rules on food standards under this deal, as Jonathan Reynolds implied? (See 8.27am.) Kallas says the there have been extensive talks about food standards. But she says the UK decided to be outside the EU, and outside the EU it does not have the same influence as countries that are inside, she says. Kaja Kallas, the EU’s foreign affairs chief, is being interviewed on the Today programme now by Anna Foster. Foster asks her if she will confirm the 12-year fishing deal figure Kallas says Keir Starmer, Ursula von der Leyen and António Costa will confirm the details later. But deals have two sides, she says. Nick Robinson puts it to Reynolds that a 12-year fishing deal would be longer than anyone was expecting. The fishing industry, which believes the EU’s current access rights to UK waters are already too generous and wants them cut back, are bound to object. Reynolds won’t confirm the 12-year figure. But he says there is a good case for moving away from having annual negotiations over fishing (which was supposed to be the process from 2026, under the original post-Brexit deal negotiated by Boris Johnson) to having a system with more “consistency”. Chris Mason, the BBC political editor, tells the Today programme that he has been told a fishing deal with the EU has been agreed for 12 years. But he says the agrifoods deal that has been agreed, reducing checks on UK products going to the EU, is not subject to a time limit. Mason says he has been told the details of the youth mobility scheme have still not been finalised. Q: Will the UK now be subject to EU rules? Reynolds says he would push back against that. He says UK and EU rules are currently aligned. If EU rules were to change, the UK would want a say in shaping them. Q: How would that happen? Non-EU states do not get a say on EU laws. Reynolds says parliament would want a say. He cites Norway as an example of a non-EU country that gets to have a say in the EU rules it has to follow. Jonathan Reynolds is now being interviewed on the Today programme by Nick Robinson. Q: Is it as simple as this – the UK wants to sell more to the EU, and they want to catch more fish in UK waters? Reynolds says there is a bit more to it than than. But he says the deal is about making people better off, and improving market access. And market access is important to the fishing industry too, he says. He says they sell 70% of their products to the EU. Q: You are signing away fishing rights for 10 years? Reynolds says the current fishing agreement, giving the EU access to UK waters, runs until 2026. Q: After that talks were supposed to be annual. Have you extended the deal now for 10 years? Reynolds ducks the question. Robinson presses him again. Q: Will EU trawlers have access to UK waters for another 10 years? Reynolds says the previous government conceded the access point. And he says having to renegotiate fishing rights every year would not be practical. In an interview with Times Radio this morning Jonathan Reynolds, the business secretary, did not deny a suggestion that the youth mobility scheme with the EU, that is expected to be part of the deal being announced today, might be capped at around 45,000. When this figure was put to him, he replied: I’m not going to confirm anything until that deal is officially done, because it’s obviously very sensitive. But he said the similar youth mobility schemes that the UK has with other countries are capped. He said: If you look at the 13 we already have, they are capped, yes. So I think the Conservative deal with Australia capped it at 45,000, but nothing like that number of visas is ever issued every year. He also said these schemes were “fundamentally different to what we experienced when we had freedom of movement when we were in the EU”. Downing Street sources are confirming that a deal has been done, Jessica Elgot reports. She says the EU has also dropped its demand for the extension of the current fishing deal (agreed by Boris Johnson as part of the original post-Brexit deal – and widely seen as generous to the EU) to be pegged to the length of the deal for agrifoods. (See 6.40am.) Good morning. I’m Andrew Sparrow, picking up from Yohnannes Lowe. Jonathan Reynolds, the business secretary, is giving interviews this morning saying that the post-Brexit reset deal between the UK and the EU has not been finally agreed (see 7.37am), but he’s just being pedantic. It all seems sorted. It just has not been formally announced yet. Here is the timetable for how the day will unfold. 10.15am: Keir Starmer and other leaders arrive for the EU-UK summit at Lancaster House. On the UK side the lead participants are Starmer, David Lammy, the foreign secretary, and Nick Thomas-Symonds, the Cabinet Office minister in charge of post-Brexit relations with the EU. On the EU side, the lead partiicpants are Ursula von der Leyen, the European Commission president, António Costa, president of the European Council, Kaja Kallas, the EU’s foreign affairs chief, and Maroš Šefčovič, the European commissioner responsible for post-Brexit relations with the UK. 12.30pm: Starmer, von der Leyen and Costa hold press conference. After 3.30pm: A ministerial statement is expected in the Commons. As we have been reporting, the “core details” of a reset deal between the UK and EU were agreed in the early hours, though the final touches appear to still be being worked out. The deal covers areas such as defence, trade, fishing, and a possible youth mobility scheme that could allow British and European 18- to 30-year-olds to travel freely around Europe under certain conditions. In an interview with Sky News this morning, the UK’s trade secretary Jonathan Reynolds said the deal has not been finalised, with issues over agricultural products and e-gates remaining sticking points in the negotiations. He said: Nothing on these deals is sorted until it all gets sorted. There’s a deal to be done here, we’ve always said that. There are real benefits to the UK which are on offer on sorting this out, because there are massive gaps that we have with the EU at the moment. “There is not currently a deal agreed at this point,” Reynolds added. We expect an announcement on defence and security later today, which could see the UK get access to a £125bn EU defence fund - a boost for UK defence companies. The fund has taken on a new sense of urgency since Donald Trump re-entered the White House in January as the US president has signalled that America will no longer be the primary guarantor of European security. My colleagues Jennifer Rankin and Jessica Elgot have a little more detail about the fund in this story. Here is an extract from it: The SAFE fund would allow EU member states to take out loans to buy up to €150bn of air and missile defence systems, ammunition, drones and other military kit. It was proposed by the commission in March, as part of a drive to increase European defence spending by €800bn amid deep shock at Donald Trump’s rush to offer concessions to Vladimir Putin in a bid to end Russia’s war on Ukraine. Reflecting the influence of the French president, Emmanuel Macron, the fund has a “buy European” rule meaning that components from non-EU countries can only make up 35% of the cost of any project. That restriction is relaxed for Ukraine and any country with a defence and security partnership with the EU. Talks between the UK and EU over a significant reset to relations achieved a last-minute breakthrough overnight, believed to be about fishing rights. However there are still some steps to be taken, reports the Guardian’s political editor, Pippa Crerar. The talks were taking place over the weekend ahead of a key summit in London hosted by Keir Starmer with EU leaders on Monday, which is aimed at resetting the UK’s relationship with the bloc five years after Brexit. The talks were aimed at striking a deal to be signed at the summit and had gone down to the wire to resolve squabbling over long-standing issues, including fishing rights and a youth mobility scheme. It is understood a breakthrough was made over fishing rights. “The EU was insisting the government offer long-term access to British waters, beyond four-year deal proposed by UK, and was pushing for double-digit extension,” reports Pippa Crerar. “Brussels had linked fishing with agreement to drop checks and bureaucracy around sale of food, animal & other agricultural products, known as sanitary and phytosanitary goods (SPS). EU had suggested this should be pegged to same timescale as fish.” An agreement would mark a symbolic step in turning the page on the animosity that followed Britain’s exit from the bloc in January 2020. No 10’s decision to issue a press statement on Saturday presenting the summit as a done deal caused irritation in Brussels, prompting some to recall the mantra of Brexit negotiations: “Nothing is agreed until everything is agreed.”
Author: Andrew Sparrow (now); Yohannes Lowe and Helen Livingstone (earlier)