Talks aimed at securing a Brexit trade deal will resume in Brussels later.
Yesterday the EU’s chief negotiator said a deal is still “possible” but sticking points remain on issues like fishing rights.
Michel Barnier also said a short no-deal period is possible at the beginning of January, even if an agreement is reached in the coming days.
The Brexit transition period finishes at the end of this month.
Danish MEP Morten Petersen is optimistic an agreement is on the cards while Ireland South MEP, Billy Kelleher, says if a deal is reached this week, it should be applied provisionally to avoid a no-deal scenario.
Former IFA President and Kilkenny man John Bryan is on the EU Economic and Social Committee. On The Way It Is with Sue Nunn last evening he said “Any trade deal, what they call legal scrubbing has to go on which means documents go to the services, have to be translated to 23 languages, studied by the legal services then sent out to the member states so then the Council, which is the 27 remaining member states, have to study it, they have to make a decision, the Parliament want to see it in these 23 languages, this can take anything between four and six weeks which is why originally they were talking about the middle of November being the end-date”.
He adds “The reality is if there is a three week or a four week of no-deal, I can’t see Irish food companies whether they’re Glanbia or the meat factories or pig process, selling any food to England with the risk of a tariff so unless they solve that solution problem between now and the first of January we could have something like I predicted months ago, UK supermarkets short of food by the middle of January”.
