Coveney confident the EU and UK can avert failure of trade talks

Minister for Foreign Affairs Simon Coveney has said he remains confident the EU and UK can avert a failure of trade talks in the coming days. But Mr Coveney warned that, should talks fail, it was unrealistic to expect trade negotiations with the UK to resume within the next year.

“I know there is a growing pessimism across the EU and coming out of London,” he said in Berlin, “but I still believe there are enough realists involved in this process to understand the consequences of no deal, regardless of what is being said publicly.”

Breaking the deadlock, the Minister said, hinged on the ability to focus on common ground rather than “stubbornly focusing on difference”, in particular on issues around sovereignty in talks.

“Nobody is questioning British sovereignty or British control. Britain will be an independent and sovereign state in control of its own laws and waters,” he said. “But that doesn’t mean, as part of an overall trade deal, that there can’t be agreements with that sovereign state to ensure that EU interests are protected too.”

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A year after both sides signed up to the ideas of fair competition in the future arrangement, Mr Coveney suggested the key to a final breakthrough was to “dial down” emotive language and abandon a “prism of winners and losers” in favour of a compromise agreement all can embrace.

Regardless of the outcome of Brexit talks, on top of other global challenges, he hoped the EU would find a way to retain the UK as a close partner rather allow them become "a friend moving in another direction after blame game and acrimony".

He was speaking alongside German foreign minister Heiko Maas who said, after years of talks, both sides knew in great detail the priorities and concerns of the other side.

“It cannot fail just because a few more days are needed,” said Mr Maas. “But in the end it will be a political decision whether there is a compromise or not.”

Security council

The two men were meeting as Germany ends and Ireland begins its term on the United Nations Security Council. After two years as a non-permanent member, Mr Maas said he was proud that Berlin had anchored in a resolution for the human rights of those who suffer sexual violence in conflict, and created new means for the New York-based body to act on security questions thrown up by climate change.

Mr Coveney said Ireland would build on these “very important contributions” by Germany and bring to talks a dual perspective as an EU member and a small country interested in preserving a rules-based approach to global affairs.

“We will play our part to do everything we can to build to find progressive ways forward,” he said. Instead of passing a security council baton to his Irish opposite number, Mr Maas instead gifted his Irish visitor the wooden gavel he had used to assert order in recent online diplomatic negotiations.

As Mr Maas gave the gavel one last whack, Mr Coveney quipped: “Is that someone saying I talk too much?”