The focus of things seems t o have gone back to the 'backstop', as it did last year and it is being promoted as the only stumbling block to an agreement. Boris says it must go, and Barnier says it must stay. There's a lot more to it than that.
What a a mess! There's an enormous number of issues, which all mean different things to different people, all driven by a simple question we were asked three years ago.
The (rejected) 'agreement' is well over 500 pages long, and was written by the EU. I haven't read it, and I doubt many people including MP's actually have done. I found this extract yesterday, by a chap called John Ashworth. I always doubted that we would 'get back control of our fisheries', and what's all that about EU military interventions? I thought NATO did that not the EU, and that there would never be an EU military force.
There I go being naive again.
The next week few weeks will be historic. I'm ordering extra popcorn. . . .
I confess that I have not read every word. There are parts which I have only skimmed over, concentrating on the sections I am most interested in. The document is very heavy going as nearly every paragraph is cross-referenced to a Treaty, Regulation or Directive, and each one has to be looked up, read and understood before moving on. It takes hours.
One issue on which I felt the EU had particularly humiliated us was defence. Here is one particularly disturbing extract from the Withdrawal Agreement:
Article 124 Specific arrangements relating to the Union’s external action
Part 6 During the transition period, the United Kingdom shall not provide commanders of civilian operations, heads of mission, operation commanders or force commanders for missions or operations conducted under Articles 42, 43 and 44 TEU [Treaty on European Union], nor shall it provide the operational headquarters for such missions or operations or serve as framework nation for Union battlegroups. During the transition period, the United Kingdom shall not provide the head of any operational actions under Article 28 TEU.
I looked up Articles 28, 42, 43 and 44 from the Treaty on European Union and it appears to me that during any transitional period, the EU would be able to make use of our forces but they would not be under British command. What a humiliation!
I digress. My main area of expertise is Fisheries. I will start with the effects of the Withdrawal Agreement on the catching sector – in other words, fishermen. I will tackle the marketing sector later, as there are more than 30 regulations to check!
Article 130 of the Withdrawal Agreement discusses specific arrangements relating to fishing opportunities. It contains four paragraphs which require the reader to cross reference to articles 43(3) TEU and point (b) of Article 129(2). I won’t go into all the details, but suffice it to say that these few paragraphs give the EU everything it requires – in other words, access to our waters under the same terms as when we were a member state.
