The UK's pre Brexit negotiation with the EU

Paul Adamson in conversation

Paul Adamson

News & Politics, Rss

4.4 • 7 Ratings

🗓️ 23 January 2017

⏱️ 30 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Jonathan Faull, former head of the European Commission's "UK referendum task force", talks to Paul Adamson about the UK's negotiation for a new settlement in its EU membership ahead of the referendum.

Transcript

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0:00.0	This is Paul Adamson and I'm in conversation with Jonathan Fall.
0:11.0	Jonathan Fall has recently left the European Commission after career spanning almost four decades.
0:17.0	And his most recent job was the head of the UK referendum task force.
0:25.4	Jonathan, I've been wanting to talk to you about your most recent job for a long time,
0:28.7	but now you've left the European Commission now as a good opportunity, hopefully.
0:33.7	First of all, I'd like to get a flavour of how the discussion and negotiations took place between the EU, the European Commission and the United Kingdom and its civil service.
0:38.6	What kind of discussion was it? Was it real negotiation or simply more of a civilised
0:44.1	conversation between consenting adults?
0:47.7	Well, it was usually very simple, but it was a real negotiation. Certainly towards the end as we approached the European Council meetings in December and February of 2016,
1:03.0	we were talking about very detailed wording and texts.
1:08.0	There were many, many discussions, some more formal than others.
1:16.6	And I think the atmosphere was civilized throughout, but there were very difficult issues,
1:22.6	quite obviously to be dealt with. And if looks back at the the various phases of the
1:31.9	operation I think from the election of the Conservative government in May
1:41.3	until November when Prime Minister David Cameron set out his demands in a letter.
1:50.0	There was a period during those months of informal discussion because the British had not set out in writing exactly what they wanted.
2:01.6	It was pretty obvious to a very large extent what they thought they wanted,
2:08.6	but the discussions then were necessarily informal and then moved into a more formal stage.
2:13.6	So there are certain parallels in a sense up to a point between that situation of the five
2:18.2	months or so between the election, the re-election, the Conservative Government and its formal
2:23.9	letter to Donald Tusk, the President of the European Council, and the situation after the referendum
2:28.3	last year where, well, until the very recent speech by Theresa May, a few days ago, in London, we did not know.
	...

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