Britain and EU face years of trade talks

Hammering out a trade deal between EU and post-Brexit Britain will be a one-of-a-kind negotiation, a battle between intimate allies unprecedented in modern history, officials and analysts say.

Recent EU free trade agreements including ones with Canada and South Korea have taken at least five years to achieve, with negotiators bogged down in both tiny details and major headaches.

Efforts to reach a trade deal with the US have taken even longer and now stalled - but insiders say Brexit could top the lot when it comes to difficulty.

Lurking over the trade talks is the prospect of no deal, known as "hard Brexit", a legal void that most observers believe could have grave consequences for Britain, but also the EU.

An EU-Britain deal would be the "biggest free trade deal ever struck ... that goes far deeper than what happens for EU-Canada or EU-Korea," Ivan Rogers, who stepped down as Britain's ambassador to the European Union in January, told British MPs last month.

Both deals were followed by a bruising ratification process by the EU's national governments.

(China Daily 03/31/2017 page12)