Boris Johnson: UK doesn’t need EU rules for Brexit trade deal
Prime Minister Boris Johnson has said the UK will not accept EU rules as part of a post-Brexit trade deal, but said Britain is not going to engage in a “cut-throat race to the bottom” standards.
In a heavily trailed speech in London, the PM said: “There is no need for a free trade agreement to involve accepting EU rules on competition policy, subsidies, social protection, the environment or anything similar.”
The pound was down 1.1 per cent against the dollar shortly after the speech, at $1.305, as traders weighed up Johnson’s hard-line position.
The Prime Minister’s address came just after the EU’s lead Brexit negotiator Michel Barnier laid out the bloc’s position in Brussels.
He made clear the EU’s long-standing position that the UK’s level access to the single market would depend on its alignment with its rules and regulations.
Barnier insisted there must be so-called level playing field provisions that guarantee the UK will not undercut the EU on standards.
Yet in his speech just after Barnier’s, Johnson said that it was not necessary for the UK to sign up to these rules to reach a free-trade agreement.
He said that the UK will keep its current level of standards, which he said are in many places higher than in the EU. The PM also said the UK would not insist the EU follows its rules.
“Are we going to insist that the EU does everything that we do as the price of free trade? Are we? Of course not,” he said.
“We want a comprehensive free trade agreement similar to Canada’s but in the unlikely event that we do not succeed then our trade will have to be based on our existing withdrawal agreement with the EU.”
“Let’s be clear the choice is emphatically not deal or no deal, we have a deal,” he said.