Britain must consider trade-offs in EU talks, chief executive says

[March 09, 2020] BRUSSELS (Reuters) - Britain needs to think about what trade-offs it wants to accept in trade talks with the European Union, the bloc's chief executive said on Monday.

As Britain and the EU started talks on their new relationship after Brexit, the bloc said there were serious gaps but an agreement was still possible by the end of the year.

"We want to be very ambitious, we want to have a very good relationship with our British friends," said the head of the EU's executive Commission, Ursula von der Leyen.

"It will be important that the United Kingdom makes up its mind. The closer they want to have the access to the single market, the more of course they have to play by the rules that are the rules of the single market," she told a news conference.

"If this is not the UK's choice, they will be more distant and it will be more difficult to for the UK to access the single market. So it's up to the United Kingdom within these negotiations to think about the trade-offs they want to take into account."

(Reporting by Marine Strauss and Gabriela Baczynska; Editing by Peter Graff)

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