Let's have a look at what the Future Relationship negotiators have been spending their time on so far

1/

This data comes from the Commission's website: https://ec.europa.eu/info/european-union-and-united-kingdom-forging-new-partnership/future-partnership/negotiation-rounds-future-partnership-between-european-union-and-united-kingdom_en

I've weighted it by negotiating sessions, with joint topics split between the original 11 headings

2/

You'll note that there's a lot of persistence of topics; even the ones you don't hear about still get their slots in the programme

Thematic cooperation has dropped off this week's list, the first that's happened for any topic, but it doesn't mean it's sorted

3/

Likewise, the big problem areas (LPF, fish, governance, etc.) aren't crowding out the rest, even if they might be caused the biggest headaches right now

4/

Part of making sense of this is that each area needs to work up a legal text to add into the mix, and none of them have reached that point yet

5/ https://twitter.com/JenniferMerode/status/1295702700735291401?s=20

This week isn't going to change that, not least because we're closing in on a point where political leaders need to make moves, to allow the technical stuff to proceed

6/

TBH I'd hoped this would pull out some more exciting trends, but that's because I forgot how much such negotiations are not exciting, but instead mechanical

Of course, it also fails to show the informal work going on, or the detail of what happens in each session

7/

tl;dr technical work continues, but politicians need to spend time on moving this forward now

/end