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Politico (8 December 2020)

By Barbara Moens And Cristina Gallardo

Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and British Prime Minister Boris Johnson will on Wednesday take over Brexit talks from their chief negotiators. The EU's Michel Barnier and the U.K.'s David Frost have been ordered to sum up the remaining obstacles for their respective bosses, who will look each other in the eye for the first time since Britain formally left the EU in January. 

Both sides have long pushed for more political engagement from the other. After all, Brussels has not forgotten how Johnson massively backtracked on his initial positions in the endgame of the negotiations of the Withdrawal Agreement, which the two sides signed up to last year. On the other side, London hoped the involvement of EU leaders such as German Chancellor Angela Merkel would help introduce more flexibility into what it sees as Barnier's rigid negotiating mandate. 

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