Chief Negotiators for the EU and the UK have agreed a set of organising principles for the next phase in negotiations, including the following:

1. the parties have agreed to intensify negotiations; talks will take place across all negotiating tables concurrently; negotiations will take place daily including weekends, unless both sides agree otherwise;
2. this next and final phase of the negotiations will in principle be on the basis of each side’s legal texts while a common approach is found, unless lead negotiators in an individual workstream agree that a different approach is more appropriate;
3. lead negotiators in each of the workstreams should move as quickly as possible to a read through of both texts, with a view to identification of areas of convergence;
4. a small joint secretariat, staffed by officials and lawyers from both sides, will be established to hold a master consolidated text; the joint secretariat will establish a methodology for managing the legal texts, in consultation with the lead negotiators of each workstream;
5. this textual process should be accompanied by discussions in the workstreams on the outstanding more political issues;
6. the Chief Negotiators and/or Deputy Chief Negotiators from both parties will oversee progress of the negotiations, consider issues escalated from the workstreams from the negotiation tables, give direction to workstream leads, and deal with the most sensitive political issues in the talks; the group should meet every day; and
7. the initial phase of the negotiations will take place in London from 22 October until 25 October 2020; thereafter the negotiations should take place in person in London and Brussels, or via teleconference, or a mix of the two, as agreed by both parties.

To read the set of organising principles in full, click here.