Hello and welcome to another Emlex podcast. I'm Anna Rita Rego, Emlex's London Managing Editor.

The Brexit negotiations have just begun and already we have a huge impasse.

In the words of the EU's chief negotiator, Michelle Barnier, there is fundamental divergence between Brussels and London.

The issue is the European Court of Justice. Should the Luxembourg-based court have jurisdiction over the questions of citizens' rights in the UK after Brexit?

Join with me to discuss this is Brexit correspondent Matthew Holhouse.

Hello, Matthew.

Hello.

What is the situation with the negotiation so far?

Does it amount to a standoff?

From what we've heard from the chief negotiators on both

sides so far, they're a long way apart, and the clock is ticking. We've had the first

substantive round of negotiations where a UK-N-E negotiators scoped out the issues. And the problem

is the role of the European Court of Justice in the UK post-Brexit.

The EU position is that questions of EU law and chiefly the question of citizens' rights,

the status of EU citizens in the UK, UK nationals in the EU, post-Brexit,

that has to be under the jurisdiction of the European Court of Justice,

and their cases will be referred to the ECJ, and those rulings will be binding on the UK.

The UK says that's simply not acceptable because the European Court of Justice is the Court of the

European Union. The UK won't be in the European Union. There's no precedent for a non-EU state

to be subject to the rulings of the court, not least because the UK won't be in the European Union. There's no precedent for a non-EU state to be

subject to the rulings of the court, not least because the UK won't have a judge there.

Both sides are dug in pretty hard. And this isn't a secondary technical issue that can be left

...