Originally Posted by
infrequentflyer789
Does sound awfully like the arrangement with Switzerland's EASA membership (and maybe other EFTAs - not sure) though doesn't it? Switzerland appears to have issues with ECJ jurisdiction.
Indeed it does. However, in the end switzerland had to follow an ECJ ruling whereas the swiss final court ruled differently. In this case it was germany vs. switzerland concerning the overfly restrictions over germany for ZRH bound traffic. The result of not following the ECJ ruling would have been a complete withdrawal of all EU-Swiss agreements ending the single market access. However, the swiss still have the single market access including the four freedoms.
Originally Posted by
infrequentflyer789
Personally I think (and this applies to both sides) that what should be being asked for (at least at this stage) is things that already have precedent, ie. what other non-EU states already get or give. Once you've reached agreement in all the areas where there precedents, then you can move onto the areas where a full-custom-never-done-before solution would be required. Of course I'm not running things so both the sides have gone headlong into "full custom never done before" mode, and a pantomime where the EU says "tell us what you want", the UK says "we want X Y Z cake+eat+knobs-on" and the EU says "that's impossible, tell us what you want".
If, in terms of EASA, the UK did just ask for what the EU already gave someone else then that ought to be progress - the EU can no longer say "that is impossible" for a start. The EU can still say "**** off, you're not having that because we don't like you as much as X" or suck their cheeks in and say "well, that'll cost you...", or whatever, but at least we will have moved from the "impossible" to the negotiable.
That is basically what Mr. Barnier has put out from the beginning on his famous slide where he has all the different kind of existing agreements and then the UK red lines that prevent using them leaving only the canada option and a border in the irish sea. Every existing option is there, although the EU really doesn’t like the swiss way as it is extremely cumbersome to renegotiate 140 or so agreements for every little change. However, the EU apparently does not want to add any extra cherry on top, because of course the existing agreement parties would then want the same.