EU chief negotiator Michel Barnier has been appointed head of the EU team that will negotiate a future free trade agreement with Great Britain. Barnier currently leads the team of legal and technical experts that has been negotiating with the British over Brexit for the past three years. That team will be expanded for the negotiations on a European-British trade agreement.
A framework for the new trade agreement already exists, in the form of the political declaration drawn up as an annex to the withdrawal agreement. In it, the EU and the United Kingdom indicate the direction both parties want their new trade relationship to take. This declaration will have to result in a trade agreement after the British exit, which is expected to take years of negotiations.
Negotiations can begin as soon as the British and European parliaments approve the final version of the Brexit deal, which Prime Minister Boris Johnson reached last week in Brussels. That point has not yet been reached. It is quite likely that the British parliament will want to attach detailed conditions to such an agreement.
Furthermore, it is known that the Labour opposition wants to maintain a number of EU rules after Brexit concerning environmental policy, social provisions, minimum wage, and labor issues. Additionally, there remains the possibility that British voters will have their say on this matter, either through a (second) referendum or via early parliamentary elections.
Barnier previously stated that the agreement reached by the European Union with the United Kingdom is the only deal through which an orderly, negotiated Brexit can be achieved. The British parliament still has to vote on this deal and the associated laws. According to Barnier, significant changes are therefore no longer possible.
But that will not be the end of the story, Barnier clarified. There will have to be negotiations on a trade agreement between the EU and the United Kingdom, as agreed in the Political Declaration. Those negotiations are expected to last one to three years or possibly even longer.