Treaties, Treaties and even more Treaties
The FT recently did a count of exactly how many international agreements with the EU will have to be renegotiated during these negotiations. 759, that is the all important number of treaties that will have to be renegotiated over the next two years of Brexit negotiations.
Lets put this into perspective. Lets say that each of these treaties; treaties that have taken months, maybe even years of negotiations will only take a week. Actually lets say they will take a day, a single day for both the UK and the 27 EU member countries to reach a consensus on. If they only took a single day, by the time these negotiations are supposed to have been completed we would not have even reached that all important number.
Now, maybe different teams will be negotiating the treaties and report back to the UK’s chief negotiator David Davis or the EU’s chief negotiator Guy Verhofstadt. Thus, streamlining the process. However we are still assuming that not only will each treaty only take a single day to renegotiate and thus ignoring any time lag or bureaucratic clusterfuck that comes from negotiating international agreements but also any potential for push back or disagreement from either party. Something that seems unlikely even with the basic treaties on fisheries and agriculture, and impossible when it comes to more complex ones like airline landing rights, regulation and trade. Not to mention the border negotiations with Spain over Gibraltar, and the Republic of Ireland over their border with Northern Ireland. A situation made increasingly tense with the involvement of the DUP and their support in propping up the Conservative party.
But we’re missing the best/worst bit, a large section of these negotiations will also involve third parties in the form of non-EU countries that have signed treaties with the EU on matters ranging from trade, nuclear issues and agriculture. That means that a number of agreements are going to have to be negotiated with America’s resident nationalist in the White House. Try getting a mutually beneficial trade agreement with him given his opposition to trade agreements like TPP and NAFTA all within the two year time limit.
To borrow a line from Lord Bucket ‘it is going to be a shit-show’
