‘EU can’t cherry pick post-Brexit trade deal’

Bloomberg

The European Union can’t pick and choose which bits of its economic relationship with Britain it maintains and which it eliminates in any future trade deal, UK Brexit Secretary David Davis said, throwing the words of EU diplomats back at them.
Post-Brexit trade talks are due to start in March, with a year remaining until Britain’s scheduled exit day in 2019. Writing in Tuesday’s Daily Telegraph, Davis described the discussions as “a deep and open exploratory dialogue to discover a new, mutually acceptable point of balance in our relationship.”
“The final deal should, among other things, cover goods, agriculture and services, including financial services, and be supported by continued intelligent cooperation in highly-regulated areas such as transportation, energy and data,” Davis wrote. “A deal which took in some areas of our economic relationship but not others would be, in the favored phrase of EU diplomats, cherry picking.” Davis’s remarks are a riposte to his EU counterpart, Michel Barnier, who told reporters last month that financial services couldn’t be included in a deal with UK because no previous EU trade agreement with other countries had such provisions. UK envoys are determined to defend the interests of financial and professional services.
“My objective is that services can be traded across borders, from highly regulated sectors like financial services to modern ones such as artificial intelligence,” Davis said.
“This will require some common principles: our shared adherence to international standards; the cooperation of our regulators; and an effective dispute resolution mechanism with proportionate remedies.”