The UK announced it’s piling pressure on the European Union to shift the focus of Brexit negotiations away from the terms of divorce and onto their future relationship.
Britain will publish a flurry of documents in the coming days laying out the government’s position on topics ranging from data protection to judicial cooperation. Five papers are due to be published in the week starting Monday, the Department for Exiting the European Union said in a statement on Sunday. The next round of negotiations is due to start on Aug. 29.
Before talks can move on to commerce, Prime Minister Theresa May needs to convince EU leaders at an October summit that enough progress has been made on citizens’ rights, the U.K.’s exit bill, and the border with Ireland. With the clock ticking down to the March 2019 departure date, Brexit Secretary David Davis has an added sense of urgency to try and get a discussion on trade going.
While the UK insists it wants to hold trade and divorce talks in tandem, the EU has been unwavering in its stance that details of the separation must be sorted out first. Moreover, the 27 other EU nations have united behind their lead negotiator Michel Barnier in the past five months.
The five upcoming papers are “all part of our work to drive the talks forward, and make sure we can show beyond doubt that we have made sufficient progress on withdrawal issues by October,” Davis said in the statement. Britain is “putting forward imaginative and creative solutions to build a deep and special partnership with our closest neighbors and allies.”
On Monday, Britain plans to publish papers on “goods on the market” and “confidentiality of documents.” The first is a response to an EU paper setting out provisions that goods made available for sale before Brexit should still be available for purchase in both the EU and U.K. after Britain’s withdrawal.
Davis will say the EU proposals should extend to related services; for example, a maintenance contract that comes with the sale of an elevator.
While the document will only cover a small part of the withdrawal deal, it foreshadows the fight Britain faces to ensure services are covered in a future trade deal with the EU. Services make up 80 percent of the gross value added to the British economy, compared to an EU-wide 74 percent.
The data protection and judicial cooperation papers will come later in the week, along with one on proposed mechanisms for dispute resolution once the European Court of Justice no longer has jurisdiction in the UK.
This last one is expected to cause the most friction, since May has made escaping the jurisdiction of European courts a red line while the EU see a continued role for the ECJ.