Brexit: Enchelmaier (Univ. of Oxford), “there is no deadline, UK-EU talks will continue over the next ten years”.

(London) “There is no deadline. It could be next Sunday or December 31st. The UK-EU talks will continue over the next ten years”. Interviewed by SIR news agency, Stefan Enchelmaier, professor of European law at the University of Oxford, said this about the decision by British Prime Minister Boris Johnson and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen to postpone by four days the deadline for reaching a post-Brexit trade deal. “The negotiating teams will resume their work until the weekend, but there are too many interests at stake”, the expert explained. “Trade ties between the UK and countries like Ireland, France, Belgium, the Netherlands and Germany are too strong to be broken. The stakes are high on two levels. The political level, where the gap has become unbridgeable, and the economic level”. According to Enchelmaier, “most of the UK's ruling Conservative Party has an idea of sovereignty, based on national States, which dates back to the 19th century and has been superseded by the European Union. At this very level, communication has become impossible. From an economic point of view, however, compromise is always possible. It is true that, after leaving the EU, the transition period for Britain ends on 31 December; this symbolic date remains, but a solution can always be found to continue the talks”.
Silvia Guzzetti