Brexit trade deal with EU may take 10 years and still fail
A trade deal between Britain and the European Union following Brexit might take 10 years to finalize and could still fail, the UK ambassador to the bloc has told Prime Minister Theresa May's government.
The British envoy to the EU, Ivan Rogers, warned ministers that the European consensus was that a deal might not be done until the early to mid-2020s and that national parliaments of EU states could still reject it, the BBC reported.
May's spokesman said this was not the view of Rogers or the government. “The government is fully confident of negotiating a deal within the time frame we have already established,” Greg Swift, told reporters in London.
“It’s wrong to suggest that this is advice from our ambassador -- he is reflecting views that were put to him which is a role that all ambassadors have,” he added.
However, EU officials have said that negotiating a trade deal with the bloc can take years, pointing to the fact that Canada started talks in 2009 for a free-trade agreement that has yet to enter force.
The British leader has said she will invoke Article 50 of the EU's Lisbon Treaty, a two-year process for leaving the bloc, by the end of March.
Negotiating a final Brexit deal would take "at least five years," former UK cabinet secretary Sir Gus O'Donnell predicted. "We certainly won't have come to any final arrangements in two years' time," he told BBC Radio.
The EU’s chief Brexit negotiator, Michel Barnier, has said that a withdrawal will not be a better deal for the UK than staying in the EU and London could not "cherry pick" on issues such as the EU single market.
Retaining access to the single market has been one of the major worries for UK businesses ever since the country voted to leave the EU in a referendum on June 23.
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