RTE - EU Determined To Make UK Pull Plug On Post-Brexit FTA

Tony Connelly at RTE tweets a long thread on EU-UK FTA talks, selected quotes below:

• "There's a lot of talk about time pressure +who that benefits. The EU has more onerous ratification obligations than the UK, eg the European Parliament will have to ratify the week beginning Dec 14."
• "As has been widely discussed, the EP typically needs 4 wks to run it through its committees."
• "However the EU is shifting strategy, going for "patience" and finding legal solutions to remove any time pressure caused by all the procedures. This cd include Provisional Application of parts of a deal from Jan 1, but that's regarded as "messy" and would only gain a few weeks."
• "The bigger determination seems to be to let the UK be the ones to pull the plug. This wd be on the basis that the EU is better placed to weather the storm of No Deal than the UK."
• "Yes, parts of the EU would be badly hit - not least Ireland, but also Denmark, Belgium, the Netherlands, parts of France etc. The calculation is that these constituencies will be supported financially, and in the time the UK will have to come back to the table next year."
• "One source says: "The timing on both sides is an issue but we are not going to be the ones to pull the plug + say we're not moving forward anymore. The pressure is more on the UK. At the end of the day we still have the single market, we still have the Withdrawal Agreement"."
• If a breakthrough is achieved on LPF/Governance, then fisheries will likely be a classic numbers, hard bargaining, last minute negotiation, which may even involve @vonderleyen @BorisJohnson
• But the EU appears to be calculating that the UK won't move in its direction on LPF, and so is prepared to wait it out, even if that means time really does run out and we're in a No Deal situation.