BRUSSELS: A senior EU official said on Monday it “may be too late already” to put in place any trade deal with Britain before its informal membership of the European Union expires at the end of this year if Brexit negotiators seal a deal this week or next.
Ireland, the EU state most exposed to Britain’s exit from the EU, said earlier in the day that Britain and the bloc had up to 10 days to unlock talks to prevent sudden tariffs and quotas from eating into an estimated trillion dollars worth of annual trade in just over six weeks.

“They haven’t quite reached where they had hoped to be,” one of EU diplomats following Brexit said as talks between the bloc’s negotiator Michel Barnier and his UK counterpart, David Frost, resumed in Brussels.

A senior EU diplomat, also speaking under condition of anonymity, added: “Britain has choices to make.”

A third EU diplomatic source said: “One cannot say things haven’t moved, since the negotiators are writing a legal text together. So there is some movement. But also way to go still.”

“The (issues of) level playing field, governance and fisheries are pending. As are serious decisions to be taken by the UK.”

While Brexit negotiators were still looking for mutually acceptable solutions to the three most contentious issues, the senior EU official said it might already be too late for the necessary ratification by the European Parliament even if Brexit negotiators nail down a deal this week or next.

“It’s getting terribly late and may be too late already,” said the official, adding that the 27-nation EU would decide next steps once Barnier and Frost produce a deal, if at all.

Upheaval In Johnson’S Circle

The European Parliament has previously said it could give the necessary consent at its last plenary meeting scheduled for this year on Dec. 15-16 – if the lawmakers received a finished text of a trade treaty on Monday at the latest.

“We remain determined, patient, respectful. We want our future cooperation to be open but fair in all areas,” Barnier said on Monday as he resumed talks with Frost.

EU sources also wondered if the upheaval this month in British Prime Minister Boris Johnson‘s inner circle – in which his top adviser and Brexit mastermind Dominic Cummings was ousted – was distracting London’s attention. This, they said, may be making it harder for Frost to know exactly how far he could go towards a compromise to clinch a deal.

Johnson’s Downing Street office said there had been no change to its Brexit strategy after Cummings’ departure, and it reiterated its uncompromising line in a statement on Monday.

“The Prime Minister has been clear that we will not accept any proposals in the negotiations that undermine our status as a sovereign, independent country and if the EU don’t respect the sovereignty of the UK we will leave on Australian terms and the Prime Minister is confident that we will prosper,” it said.

Unlike Britain’s current free-trade arrangements, Australia’s trading terms with the EU include costly barriers such as quotas and tariffs.

The 27 national EU leaders will hold a videoconference on Thursday to discuss their handling of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Should no Brexit agreement transpire by then, they are expected to focus again on preparations for a chaotic breakdown in trade at the end of 2020 when Britain’s continued participation in the EU customs union and single market ends.

Should they fail to overcome their differences, the economic fallout would worsen the recession already wrought on Britain and the EU by the coronavirus pandemic this year.

European privacy activists have filed a complaint against Apple over software that tracks the behaviour of iPhone users.

The Vienna-based non profit group noyb which stands for “none of your business” says it has asked data protection authorities in Germany and Spain to examine the legality of Apple’s tracking codes.

The codes, known as Identifier for Advertisers (IDFA), are similar to the cookies that websites use to store information on a user’s behaviour.

But the non-profit group says that Apple’s iOS operating system creates unique codes for each iPhone that allow the company and other third parties to “identify users across applications and even connect online and mobile behaviour.”

The group argues that this amounts to tracking without users’ knowledge or consent, and violates the European Union’s electronic privacy rules.

The privacy group said it is also currently reviewing a similar system used by Google.

“Tracking is only allowed if users explicitly consent to it,” said Stefano Rossetti, a lawyer for noyb in a statement.

“While Apple introduced functions in their browser to block cookies, it places similar codes in its phones, without any consent by the user. This is a clear breach of EU privacy laws.”

“Smartphones are the most intimate device for most people and they must be tracker-free by default,” says Rossetti.

Apple has dismissed the claims, made by the group, saying they were “factually inaccurate”.

“We look forward to making that clear to privacy regulators should they examine the complaint,” the company said.

“Apple does not access or use the IDFA on a user’s device for any purpose. Our aim is always to protect the privacy of our users”.

The tech giant has also stated that the latest version of its software gives users greater control over whether apps can track them, including whether their information can be linked with data from third parties for the purpose of advertising, or sharing their information with data brokers.

“Our practices comply with European law,” Apple said.

The non profit group has filed numerous cases against major tech companies, including one against Facebook that recently led the European Union’s top court to strike down an agreement that allows companies to transfer data to the United States over snooping concerns.

Trade relations are likely to be at the heart of the delayed EU-Africa ‘strategic partnership’, but only if long-standing tensions can be resolved, including different views on the content and form of the future trade partnership.

The EU-African Union summit, originally planned for mid-October, was delayed until 2021; officially because of the second wave of the COVID-19 pandemic, but long-standing disagreements are simmering over future trade policy between the two continents.

The main demand of African leaders is expected to centre on the continent’s ability to develop local industries and productive capacity to export high-value products rather than raw materials.

‘It is our hope that the new partnership will create new global value chains, to increase exports of finished goods,’ Botswana’s trade minister Peggy Serame told European Commission officials at an event in late-October.

“We as Africa need to look at our productive capacity to put in place measures to be competitive but of course there are ways where we can work with the EU, who can also encourage and help us to develop our own local productive capacity,” Serame told EURACTIV.

African ministers are also likely to request new instruments on infrastructure investment, and to improve the ease of access to existing EU funds such as the External Investment Programme and European Investment Bank funds.

Serame said that in Botswana’s case EU trade relations can be improved within the context of the Economic Partnership Agreement between the EU and the Southern African Development Community, of which Botswana is a member. The SADC Economic Partnership Agreement is the only EU trade deal with an African regional bloc to have been fully ratified and implemented.

“I wouldn’t re-write it (the EPA) completely,” Serame said.

“The EU will say that we have the best terms in the world in terms of what the EU will usually offer but, of course, we believe there are still areas where we can still engage further and find new opportunities. There are other (African) countries with no agreement at all and I would encourage them to have an agreement with the EU that can guide the partnership going forward,” she added.

Progress in ratifying the EPAs has ground to a halt in recent years. Africa’s least developed economies enjoy tariff-free access to the EU market with or without the EPAs, while wealthier countries complain that the terms of the EPA prevent them from protecting local industries and developing the capacity to export finished goods.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel has suggested that some EU-Africa trade deals could be renegotiated to include more preferential trade terms.

There are similar tensions between African regional trade blocs and the United States over the terms of the latter’s African Growth and Opportunity Act, which precludes the imposition of tariffs on a number of US exports to Africa.

While 54 African countries have agreed to create continent-wide free trade area, insiders to the EU-AU talks suggest that the EU insists that EU-Africa trade must remain based around the Economic Partnership Agreements.

At a EURACTIV event last month, a European Commission official argued that the African Continent Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) should be aligned with the EU’s green deal, the Commission’s flagship ten-year €1 trillion programme, designed to shift Europe to a low-carbon economy.

There are fears among African governments that the EU’s proposed introduction of a carbon tax as an own resource to fund future EU budgets could also catch them, since many African countries are unlikely to move as fast on green value chains as their EU counterparts.

In the meantime, the disruption to regional trade and supply chains caused by the COVID-19 pandemic has prompted a number of African countries to prioritise local industrial production, particularly agriculture, to ensure food security.

“We saw serious disruptions to our supply chains and had to put in place a number of protocols to protect ourselves and guard against the spread of the virus. That delayed the flow of goods into Botswana,” Minister Serame told EURACTIV.

“We also saw our private sector quickly identify new opportunities. We are seeing a lot more companies go into food production,” the minister added.

[Edited by Zoran Radosavljevic]

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BRUSSELS (Reuters) – Hungary and Poland blocked on Monday the adoption of the 2021-2027 budget and recovery fund by European Union governments because the budget law included a clause which makes access to money conditional on respecting the rule of law.

Ambassadors of EU governments at a meeting in Brussels were to endorse a compromise reached on the 1.8 trillion package with the European Parliament, but could not do that because of the veto from Warsaw and Budapest.

The German EU presidency said ambassadors did vote through the link between EU money and the respect for the rule of law, because this vote required only a qualified majority and the opposition of Warsaw and Budapest could not stop it.

But when it came to voting on the 1.1 trillion euro budget itself and the 750 billion euro recovery package, which require unanimous support, “two EU member states expressed reservations” the presidency said.

The Polish and Hungarian veto will now be discussed at a meeting of EU European affairs ministers on Tuesday and then at a video-conference of EU leaders on Thursday. But finding a solution might take longer than that, officials said.

Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz said it was an absolute necessity to link the distribution of European funds to rule of law standards in member states, especially when the sums to be handed out were so vast.

The nationalist governments in Budapest and Warsaw are against linking EU money and respect for the rule of law because they are under a formal EU process investigating them for undermining the independence of courts, media and non-governmental organisations.

If the link, introduced by EU leaders in July and strengthened by the European Parliament, remains, both countries risk losing access to tens of billions of euros in EU funds.

“Poland is counting on a rational approach of our partners and on working out rules which would allow to reach an agreement,” a Polish government spokesman said.

“We are open to constructive solutions, as long as they are in line with the European Council conclusions and EU treaties.”

Since without unanimous consent on the 1.8 trillion euro package no EU country can get its money, Warsaw and Budapest have strong leverage to pressure others to remove the link.

But a group of countries led by the Netherlands as well as the European Parliament wanted an even stronger link and have said they would not approve the budget without it.

The blockage means money for economic recovery for all EU countries from the recession brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic is likely to be delayed. It was originally planned to start flowing from mid-2021.

“Denying the whole of Europe crisis funding in the worst crisis since decades is irresponsible,” Manfred Weber, who heads the biggest group in the European Parliament said on Twitter.