We should always be pro et sympa, Barnier told his team a few hours before the negotiations started on 2 March 2020, a French shortcut for “professional and nice”, but also, he added, “strict and firm, this will not be an easy negotiation”, particularly on the new economic relationship. Around ten metres separated the two chief negotiators in the Berlaymont meeting room, but the chasm on the meaning of the talks was much bigger. Frost's main goal was to assert the UK's newly gained sovereignty and avoid legally binding commitments with the EU. In contrast, Barnier wanted to make sure the UK committed to legally binding obligations as a precondition for a new trade and security partnership, in particular on the level playing field, as requested by his mandate.

This would not be the easiest in the history of trade negotiations, as David Davis once suggested, but it would have to be one of the quickest. In January, Johnson told Ursula von der Leyen in London that he excluded an extension of the legal and economic status quo of the transition period beyond 2020. Barnier did not see political space for Johnson to ask for an extension. He had just won the elections on the claim that he would get Brexit done and could hardly tell public opinion that he needed more time to sort it out. This left negotiations with two scenarios: a deal or no deal to exit the transition period on 31 December 2020. A new cliff-edge loomed and a new clock started ticking. There was no time to waste, as the amount of technical matters to solve, in particular on trade, was enormous. Member states adopted a negotiation mandate on 25 February 2020, which was 22 days after the Commission made a proposal.

The future is not withdrawal

The opening round in March showed visibly how different negotiations on the future were from withdrawal. Rather than a few negotiators convening in a small meeting room, EU and UK delegations spread out in large rooms for parallel sessions. The Commission rented extra space in a conference centre. More than one hundred civil servants participated in the kick-off round, a number that grew to almost two hundred on the EU side alone as talks unfolded.