EU chief Brexit negotiator, Michel Barnier, unveils the EU's post-Brexit negotiating mandate proposal
The full proposal can be found here. Barnier is also speaking live but he is mostly just going to reiterate what is in the document. I'm skimming through it and the early pages already show that this is going to be tough:
"The European Council reiterated in particular that the future relationship with the United Kingdom will have to be based on a balance of rights and obligations and ensure a level playing field."
"The envisaged partnership is a single package that comprises three main components: - general arrangements (including provisions on basic values and principles and on governance); - economic arrangements (including provisions on trade and level playing field guarantees); and - security arrangements (including provisions on law enforcement and judicial cooperation in criminal matters, as well as on foreign policy, security and defence)."
Essentially, the EU is being explicit about how they want to go about linking market access to EU rules alignment and that is something that the UK has outright said that they will not be having any of it - if pushed on the matter.
I reckon that pretty much says a lot about how negotiations (or should I say non-negotiations) are going to take place in the coming months.
