Negotiators on behalf of the European Union and the United Kingdom start their negotiations on a trade agreement between the two parties on 3 March. The British newspaper The Guardian writes that on Tuesday based on leaked documents. The British leave the EU on Friday at 11 p.m., more than thirteen hundred days after the Brexit referendum.

With the negotiations in March a period of roughly ten months begins in which the two parties can reach a trade agreement. If not, a Brexit may still follow without an agreement, with the British crashing without agreements about the future trade relationship from the EU.

The British are still in a transitional period until the end of the year, which means that European regulations will continue to apply in the UK. British Prime Minister Boris Johnson has repeatedly said that the UK and the EU must reach a trade agreement within this transition period. Extending the transition period is, according to him, not an option. This puts a lot of pressure on the negotiations.

However, it is questionable whether the two parties will succeed in reaching a trade agreement within that tight timeframe. While the British are extremely optimistic towards the outside world about reaching an agreement on the future relationship between the two blocs, people on the EU side are a lot more pessimistic. Michel Barnier, chief negotiator on behalf of the EU, said earlier that a full trade agreement by 2020 is “unrealistic”.