ddt
Mafia Penguin
Very modest progress IMHO. According to Barnier, the UK still wants to have their cake and eat it too w.r.t. the Common Market.
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Very modest progress IMHO. According to Barnier, the UK still wants to have their cake and eat it too w.r.t. the Common Market.
Even the lower figure of forty billion euros represents about seven-and-a-half year's worth of UK payments at our current net contribution level of €104 million per week.
It seems a ludicrous figure, and it takes no account of the UK's share of EU assets. But at least if the EU had the honesty to write down a figure it would be a starting point.
It seems a ludicrous figure, and it takes no account of the UK's share of EU assets. But at least if the EU had the honesty to write down a figure it would be a starting point.
Once again, that is so much verbiage. What is the total asking price? You don't know do you? Neither does anyone else.
Yeah... There are some howlers in there...
[Davis] says the government has been trying to establish if the legal obligations laid down by the EU are properly codified.
Over a year since the referendum, 6 months since article 50 was invoked, 10 weeks since the start of negotiations... The UK government is trying to establish the legal situation. Just unbelievable.
Makes me think of the fate of british manufacturing in the last half century. Turn out you can make stuff in the UK just fine, provided the companies aren't owned and run by british people.
It's up to EU to propose the liabilities of UK towards EU and up to UK to propose the liabilities of EU towards UK.
The fact this hasn't filtered down to your negotiations team speaks volumes about their competence (or more accurately, lack thereof).
McHrozni
Maybe I was unfair to you. Are you saying that the obligations laid out in the position paper are all in order and all that remains is tallying up the total sum?
Actually, the EU position paper mentions reimbursing the UK for its shares in certain institutions.
ddt
Mafia Penguin
I disagree. it's up to both parties to claim which liabilities go both ways. Of course, the EU will claim as little liabilities it has to the UK, and vice versa, but that's just the name of the game.
Certainly both parties need to figure out what liabilities of the other party they agree with and which ones need work, but the general principle is that each party is responsible for their own share of the pie. If UK forgets to mention it should be given X€for projoect Y it shouldn't expect EU will tell them that money is theirs.
It's high time UK negotiating team realized that.
McHrozni
It seems that the UK negotiating tactic is to be infuriatingly vague and unprepared - perhaps in the hope that the EU will either become infuriated and give them what they want or feel sorry for them and give them what they want.
I agree with the EU negotiators that it's difficult to reach a compromise when one of the two parties isn't prepared to tell you (and may not even know themselves) what their negotiating position is.
I gather that this week our highly-trained team of 100 civil servants showed up in Brussels on Tuesday, as Monday was a bank holiday. Well, it was a nice day for paddling in Margate, so it's hard to blame them
The obligations aren't spelt out in a way that lets anyone calculate a total sum - it's just page after page of unclear waffle.
Can I take this to mean that you agree that the UK is obliged to pay something?
In particular, you agree with this sentence:
Through its approval of the successive Multiannual Financial Frameworks (MFFs) and the Own Resource Decision (ORD), the United Kingdom committed to fund a share of the Union obligations defined by the ORD rules
in all its dimensions.
Information Analyst
Penultimate Amazing
Which is starting to sound like a game of financial Battleships. "We diasgree with some bits, and agree with others, but we won't say which..."
Information Analyst
Penultimate Amazing
Presumably a willingness to accept or reject any particular item is dependent on what it's actually going to cost. For the more rabid Leavers, any sum >£0 will be construed as "defeat."
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Archie Gemmill Goal
Banned
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That's maybe true but it's not how obligations really work and would suggest that the uk negotiators have no principles on the matters.
If you agree that you owe something and how that something should be calculated then there is no grounds to object to the amount unless an error has been made in the calculation.
The EU can hardly present an itemized bill when they have no idea what kind of Brexit the UK wants. It's as if Theresa May went into a restaurant, was handed a menu and then demanded to know the price of the meal and becomes indignant when the waiter points out she has to order first.
Which makes it rather silly that they won't talk about the menu, or the specials, until the bill, your parking arrangements 2 years hence, and the rights of the waiters to come and play in your garden, have all been agreed.
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