Michel Barnier plans tell-all book on UK clash with EU

Michel Barnier has promised to write about his experiences as European Commission’s Head of Task Force for Relations with the United Kingdom.

As of 11pm on the 31st of December 2020 the UK’s membership of the EU single market and customs expired.

Four and a half years after the initial in/out referendum, Mr Barnier has pledged to “recount these extraordinary years in a journal book.”

The book will focus clashes between the UK and EU on some of their biggest issues, particularly fishing.

Among the tell-all book will be the moment when the British PM was told that the EU wanted to hit the UK with tariffs if it did not allow them access to British fishing waterss.

A source explained: “The PM was ready to walk at that point. We were writing a script trying to explain to the world we had blown up a £660billion deal over less than a billion quid of fish.”

The book has no release date yet but is thought to be in the works and with a predicted release of mid/late 2021.

Mr Barnier explained that the most sensitive issues for the UK negotiator Lord Frost seemed to be fishing and state aid.

“We have thus spent hours defining in a word the threshold of distortion of competition that one party could create against the other, either by massive State aid in a sector or by deregulation in the environmental, social or fiscal.

“In law, when we qualify damage, it is not the same thing to write “serious”, “material” or “not negligible. For fishing, it was necessary to translate the distribution of quotas on a hundred fish stocks into the annexes to the treaty.”

The EU chief negotiator said that without a trade argument, the UK could “exclude us completely from their waters.”

He said: “This represents 650 million euros per year. When you are a requester, you must be ready to compromise.

“This compromise will have to be managed, in detail and over time, which, in fact, goes a little beyond the 25% of the current fishing opportunities given to the British.”

UK negotiator Lord David Frost promised “we have a great future before us” as the transition period with the EU came to an end.

He tweeted: “Britain has just become a fully independent country again – deciding our own affairs for ourselves.

“Thank you to everyone who worked with me (and) @BorisJohnson to get us here in the last 18 months.

“We have a great future before us. Now we can build a better country for us all.”