Brexit talks at ‘moment of reckoning’, says Dominic Raab, as he warns UK will not budge on sticking points
Brexit negotiations are facing a "moment of reckoning" this week, Dominic Raab has warned, as he insisted the UK would not “haggle away” state aid and fisheries.
The Foreign Secretary said there was a “deal to be done” ahead of key trade talks in London but vowed that the UK would not budge on the two main areas of "contention".
He accused Brussels of "double standards" over its refusal to move on state aid, describing the issue as a “point of principle”.
Mr Raab said “We're only asking to be treated just as the EU would expect, or any other third country negotiating with the EU. I don't think that sounds unreasonable, that's just plain common sense.
"We want a positive relationship and the arm of friendship and goodwill is extended. It's up to the EU to decide whether they want to reciprocate."
It comes after the UK's chief negotiator Lord Frost said the Government was not "scared" of walking away from talks without a deal and promised not to "blink" in the final phase.
Lord Frost insisted that the UK would not agree to being a "client state" to the EU and said Theresa May's administration had allowed Brussels to believe there could be an eleventh hour concession on a trade deal.
He told The Mail On Sunday: "We came in after a Government and negotiating team that had blinked and had its bluff called at critical moments and the EU had learned not to take our word seriously.
"So a lot of what we are trying to do this year is to get them to realise that we mean what we say and they should take our position seriously."
Mr Raab said the negotiations had “boiled down to two outstanding bones of contention”, with Brussels refusing to budge on state aid and fisheries.
He told Sky News: "There is a good deal there for the EU; we'd love to do that free trade agreement - and if not, we'll fall back on Australian-style rules.
"I think this week is an important moment for the EU to really effectively recognise that those two point of principles are not something we can just haggle away.”
The Foreign Secretary admitted that there was an ongoing “debate” in Government over what the UK’s independent state aid policy should be, describing it as a “very sensitive area of lawmaking”.
He said the Government would have to balance being “pro-competition” with its “levelling up agenda”.
Mr Raab said: “If you look at some of the use of state aid and interventionism across the Continental economies it goes far and well beyond anything that is credibly realistically likely to happen in the United Kingdom.
“So it's a curious thing for the EU to get hung up, it’s a curious thing for them to take to the wire.”
This weekend The Telegraph revealed that Michel Barnier is set to be sidelined by EU leaders in a bid to get a breakthrough in the negotiations about a trade treaty with the UK.
Representatives of the bloc’s 27 member states expect Ursula von der Leyen, the president of the European Commission, to pave the way for heads of state and government to intervene in the deadlocked talks in a September 16 flagship speech.
