Little to no progress was made in at the seventh round of Brexit negotiations. EU’s chief negotiator Michel Barnier said “those who were hoping for negotiations to move swiftly forward this week will have bee disappointed and unfortunately I too am frankly disappointed and concerned, and surprised as well.”
Barnier further criticized, “the British negotiators have not shown any real willingness to move forward on issues of fundamental importance for the European Union and this despite the flexibility which we have shown over recent months.”
On the other hand, UK’s chief negotiator David Frost said, “substantive work continues to be necessary across a range of different areas of potential UK-EU future cooperation if we are to deliver it. We have had useful discussions this week but there has been little progress.”
Frost also blamed that “the EU is still insisting not only that we must accept continuity with EU state aid and fisheries policy, but also that this must be agreed before any further substantive work can be done in any other area of the negotiation, including on legal texts. This makes it unnecessarily difficult to make progress.”