Brexit: Will return of face-to-face talks mean progress?
Unlike the recent videoconference, leaders plan to meet face-to-face - Covid-19 permittingMonday sees the start of a month of intensified negotiations between the two sides. This will include weekly meetings - at times in London, at others, in Brussels. And the first face-to-face talks since the Covid-19 pandemic hit Europe, infecting the EU and the UK's chief negotiators.
The hope is that face-to-face talks will facilitate the odd informal chat over coffee or a cooling-off walk around the block, allowing negotiators the breathing space to find solutions, rather than each side continuing to parrot already well-known red lines at one another via Zoom chat or similar.Posturing and/or parroting is pretty straight-forward. Agreeing political compromises is anything but.
Brussels has indicated that it is willing to be flexible, as long as principles are protected, like protecting the single market. But what does that mean in practice? Pragmatic Germany assumes the EU's rotating six month presidency this week. Chancellor Angela Merkel is clear - she has repeatedly insisted that she's not in favour of pursuing a UK deal"at any price".
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