The future status of 3.2 million EU expats in Britain – and that of more than a million UK citizens living in continental Europe – topped the agenda in Brussels on Monday as a substantive round of Brexit negotiations got underway.As he arrived for the talks with the European Commission's chief negotiator Michel Barnier, UK Brexit Secretary David Davis said discussions would focus on citizens' rights, the issue of finance, Britain's 'divorce bill' and the border between Northern Ireland and the Republic.

Brexit deal should be broader and deeper than Canadian trade deal

As the Czech minister for Europe predicted in a BBC interview that the UK could get a “much broader, much deeper” Brexit trade deal than the one recently agreed between the EU and Canada, Mr Davis said, “For us it's incredibly important we now make good progress. That we negotiate through this and identify the differences, so that we can deal with them, and identify the similarities so that we can move forward.”Mr Barnier said this week's negotiations would “now delve into the heart of the matter”. He added, “We need to examine and compare our respective positions in order to make good progress. As you know, our negotiating groups will work on citizens' rights, on the financial settlement and other separation issues. David and I will be in contact throughout the week (and) rendezvous to take stock together on Thursday.”

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Meanwhile, Ales Chmelar, the Czech secretary of state for European affairs, told BBC Radio 4's Today programme that he believed it would be possible for the EU and UK to enjoy closer economic ties after Brexit than the Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA) hammered out with Canada. But he said Britain would face “certain commitments”, suggesting the UK would have to continue contributing to EU spending.“We still hope that there will be a mutually agreeable settlement also on trade issues and we also hope that the UK will have a specific access to the European market, that's something that we have negotiated for example now with Canada, it can be much broader, it can be much deeper,” Mr Chmelar said.“And if it is deeper than other settlements, than other trade deals, then it is understandable that there will be also certain commitments.“Now we're in the first phase, what we talk about is actually about the future. Now we're dealing with the legacy issues, it means what has been already committed and what somehow has to be settled. In this there is a lot of work to be done, we need in October so-called substantial progress in those terms, and we need to see and set at least a methodology in how much and in what areas we can actually have to settle what commitments have to be settled.”

Will the UK pay for access to EU markets?

However, former Conservative cabinet minister Owen Paterson flatly rejected the suggestion that the UK would pay for access to EU markets, telling the Today programme that it was “screamingly obvious” that reciprocal free trade without tariffs was in both sides' interests.“If you want to pay for access to a market, you pay a tariff,” he said. “Now, for us actually, we would raise far more in tariffs than the Europeans would raise with us because of this massive surplus the European Union has with us.“So I totally agree with Mr Chmelar that this has to be worked out fast and this is screamingly obvious, it's in everyone's interest that we establish reciprocal free trade without tariffs, that would be much in everybody's interests.“But if the European Union does want to charge us for access, they charge it through tariffs which we would pay at the rate of most favoured nation status under World Trade Organisation rules, not some arbitrary charge.”

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Read David Sapsted's article on Establishing Right to Remain – which discusses the uncertainty over immigration which the UK faces following Brexit – in the Summer 2017 issue of Relocate Magazine.

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For related news and features, visit our Brexit section.

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