[Sephiroth]

Originally Posted by Hugh

From the recent House of Commons European Scrutiny Committee, Oral evidence: The UK's new relationship with the EU, HC 122, on Monday 17 May 2021

https://committees.parliament.uk/ora...nce/2184/html/ - questions 68-72

https://ec.europa.eu/trade/policy/po...g/index_en.htm

Quite worrying that a member of the House of Commons European Scrutiny Committee and the Minister whose responsibilities include oversight of the effective conduct of EU related business with the EU and its Member States, don’t seem to know that individual EU countries can’t negotiate bilateral trade deals…

However, the EU are on to them….

https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1...667491841.html

Quite worrying that you are attributing "trade deals" to Drax. He neither said nor implied anything of the sort. Indeed, Frost was clear about the scope of his knowledge. In the case quoted below, I read it that he want some areas that are exclusively reserved to the EU to be delegated to countries.

Q71 Richard Drax: In any particular field. Obviously you are exploring bilateral agreements with separate EU countries. Are you having any success in those?

Lord Frost: There are some areas in EU competence where we are looking at bilateral agreements. For example, one area we would like to do bilateral agreements in is returns agreements on asylum seekers. That discussion is just beginning. The problem we face in that and some other areas is that although some member states probably do want to do bilateral agreements, that is not necessarily how the Commission sees it and, even if it is still a member state competence, the Commission has ways of influencing that. So we are just picking it up and I would say there is some way to go in that.